ACSA’s 2008 Career Technical Education Administrator of the Year Alyssa Lynch is guided by the motto “Hard work pays off.” She strives to do what’s best for students every day as she leads the Santa Clara County Office of Education’s Regional Occupational Program-North.
Lynch has dedicated more than 15 years of her 18-year education career to ROP and Career Technical Education. She is a staunch advocate for all students succeeding in a world-class workforce.
“I want to be able to help students get a head start on either college or careers,” Lynch said. “The students need direction, and CTE provides direction.”
Improved communication; student-centered, standards-based instruction; college/career articulation; automated attendance data collection and sustained professional development for staff are just a few of Lynch’s accomplishments on behalf of her students, teachers, programs and districts.
David Matuszak, director of SCCOE ROP-South, said Lynch has “provided visionary strategic direction for her organization through continual, highly focused emphasis on development of new courses to meet current labor market needs, revisions and updates of existing courses, inclusion of academic and career technical education standards in all courses, and pilot projects to obtain external certifications and implement an external assessment program.”
Everything Lynch and her team do is focused on student achievement, and helping them prepare for myriad careers.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, I would say the students who follow the CTE course of study would rate it a 10,” Lynch said. “Many CTE classes are a bull’s-eye for many students. It is the first time that they have taken a class they really enjoy. For many students, CTE classes provide a forum to express themselves; they feel comfortable in these classes. It can be their first time getting ‘turned on’ to school. It increases their self-esteem, and many students continue on to college because they found out they can learn.
“I have visited many CTE classrooms, and I cannot tell you the number of times students have said to me, ‘because of this class, I want to be a forensic investigator,’ when I am in the forensic science classroom, or chef when in the culinary arts classroom, cop when in the administration of justice classroom, or news reporter when I’m in the TV/film/video classroom.”
The ultimate proof of her success is when Lynch’s former students contact her with updates on their success.
“Many of my former students have told me, ‘it was your marketing class that changed my life,” she said. “They have called me to say ‘thank you.’”
Lynch has chosen to advocate for CTE, because many of the students are what noted education researcher Ken Gray calls “the middle student.” They are not UC bound; yet they do not have problems with reading, math or science. They simply learn in a different way.
When she was in high school, Lynch was a “middle student.” She went to Fresno State University and majored in fashion merchandising. But when she graduated, she did not have future career opportunities “drilled down.”
That provided the impetus for her career in CTE and aiding others in defining their career paths.
Throughout her career, Lynch has appreciated the assistance she has received from professional organizations such as the Association for Career Technical Education, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, California Regional Occupational Centers and Programs, and ACSA.
“ACSA membership keeps me on the cutting edge of what is happening in California education,” she said. “I look forward to all the EdCal newspapers.”
In 2006, Lynch attended the state ACSA annual conference. She had been introduced to the integration of academic standards in 2001 but had been resistant to the work that needed to be done in CTE. But, at the 2006 conference, she attended a workshop by Paula Rutherford on standards-based education.
“At that workshop a light bulb went on: I must lead, follow or get out of the way,” she said. “I went back to my office ready to start a standards-based movement of integrating CTE and academic standards.
“Only one year after starting the standards integration, one of the district administrators said to me, ‘The integration of standards has been the best thing you have done for our districts.’”
At the Santa Clara County Office of Education, Lynch has been the vice president of membership for the ACSA charter. This year, she is president, and the regional CTE rep.
“All in all, ACSA has provided me with new leadership opportunities,” Lynch said.
Now she can add the Administrator of the Year designation, which she said represents acknowledgement that a person “has really done something very right in their career to support students, teachers and learning.”
“It means they are committed to students and what they do daily,” she said. “What is really cool is that I used to tell my students that hard works always pays off, and now I had a former student tell me, ‘hard works always pays off,’ because she was one of the people who nominated me for this award. Today, this former student is also a CTE administrator. I must have done something very right in my career.”
Each of ACSA’s 19 Administrators of the Year will be featured in EdCal through Nov. 3. They will be formally honored during ACSA’s 2008 Leadership Summit, to be held Nov. 6-8 in San Diego. For more information or to register, visit ACSA Online at www.acsa.org or contact the Educational Services Department at (800) 608-ACSA or (650) 692-4300.