Adversaries and Supporters
The adversaries of the Hospitality Management program at South Division have been persistent in their opposition to this program since the program has been in existence. Usually, the criticism has been that the Hospitality Management program has only focused on the food service aspect of the industry, or it only emphasized the lower-level employment sectors of the industry. The critics have usually been wrong on this point. However, the siege mentality the team had to adopt to deal with these criticisms has led to some validity for this charge. The larger role of the food industry within the hospitality industry has never been fully explained to our critics. This is partly a result of not marketing the opportunities for advancement, the demands for increasing educational attainments, and the promotion of the ties to postsecondary education that existed in the program.
Community-Neighborhood
Other parts of the program had not been seen by the local community as being as subservient in their focus; travel and tourism, sports, parks, and recreation were seen as being more in line with upper-level management and entrepreneurial opportunities. This may be the result of the prominence of local, professional sports franchises. The Milwaukee Bucks (NBA); the Milwaukee Brewers (AL); and the Green Bay Packers (NFL), who play a portion of their home schedule in Milwaukee; and the minor league Milwaukee Admirals (IHL) have all had an impact on the daily lives of the region's citizens. The existence of Midwest Express Airline in Milwaukee as its hub has also played a part in this wider view that other aspects of the hospitality industry are more acceptable than food service.
Community-Parents
The school's local community has been critical of this program for years. However, the parents of students who enroll in the Hospitality Management program have been supportive of our efforts. What we need are more parents to voice their support of the program. The larger community has been more supportive of the efforts of the program. The members realize that the hospitality industry is a source of economic development--one of every seven jobs in the area is tied to the industry--and in the state of Wisconsin, tourism is the second largest industry. With all this, the hospitality industry would seem to be a natural focus for the development of a trained workforce based in the South Division community.
Industry-Advisory Board
We have formed an advisory board to help with this marketing problem. We hope to alleviate part of this marketing problem by our enlisting local hospitality industry representatives' assistance and participation by the Greater Milwaukee Convention and Visitors Bureau in promoting an improved image of our program in the community. Advisory board members from these groups are supportive of our efforts to overcome this opposition. As the service sector role in the community employment picture becomes more important, this support will enable us to provide a meaningful contribution to the area's continuing economic growth by providing capable, competent, and willing prospective employees for this or any other industry.
School-Faculty
The faculty opposition tends to come from a portion of the group that views vocational education as being in opposition to the development of postsecondary options for students. Some of the most vocal opponents charge that the time spent in the vocational aspects of the program is limiting to student opportunities in advanced courses, that is, Advanced Math, Speech, Advanced Placement and other higher-level classes. While this might seem to have some validity on the surface, it simply is not true for all students. The vocational specialty classes, while meeting for two periods, also allow for courses outside the vocational focus, and thus meet the needs of students wishing to take the higher-level classes. A part of the perceived problem is true: Sometimes the classes are only offered at the same time. This is usually due to limited enrollment in the courses, not because the vocational program teachers do not encourage their students to enroll in these classes.
When the faculty begins to understand that these school-to-work programs will provide greater options to all students, most of the opposition will evaporate.
The other problem with faculty support deals with integration of curriculum and the misguided notion that this somehow causes a loss of control over one's content. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, it enhances the content of the course by making the curriculum more meaningful to students. When students see a transfer of knowledge from one course to another, they become more involved in their studies. The subjects taught in an integrated course offering are constantly being reinforced by other members of the team.
Usually, when teachers finally try this method and understand how this makes their content more relevant, they become impressed with the results. For example, the social studies teacher, who was trying to make labor history relevant to most students, was having a hard time. The most common reaction to any history course is, "Why do we need this?" "When will I ever use it?" Well, with AAI, labor issues are relevant, including but not limited to contracts, health and safety issues, bargaining rights, government regulations, and a host of other topics. Or a geography teacher could involve cultural ideas, lifestyles, attractions, vacation planning, budgeting, and other ideas in the content of her or his instruction--all of which are relevant to parts of the tourism industry.
Teachers in other disciplines could find the crosscurricular ties equally impressive. Math and geography teachers could work together on common uses of time and distance problem-solving skills. Map skills development, such as the studying of latitude and longitude, are areas of possible connection. English or language arts letters could be used for information inquiries from other nations just as easily as they can be used for nonreal-world communications. Ties to vocational projects do not have to be mythical but could become real applications--for example, writing public address announcements and preparing flyers for sales of projects or information about activities is a real-world use of language.
There is another area where the conflict about the project could arise--that is in the participation of teachers who do not buy into the idea of integration. If all the members do not cooperate, the team idea is DEAD. Most teachers will try to improve their instruction, but some will not. Those teachers would be better in a non-integrated setting. Some are reluctant to change because they feel they are doing everything right as it is, some because they are afraid of change, and still others because they simply do not see change as being good. This leads to the next part of the problem. What to do about this reluctance?
School-Administration
The ideal situation would be for the local administration to take an active role in the process. This is not always possible. We are on the third new administrative team in our building in the last five years.
Every time administrators change, the philosophical focus of the school changes as well. Program support is in a state of flux almost yearly. It seems by the time an administrator understands the program focus, there is a new one to replace him or her. Stability would be a welcome relief for this program. Just about the time you get administrative allies, they leave--some by choice, some by reluctant transfer. Then the support building begins again. Leaving school in June with one set of expectations and returning in September to find another is never easy. Adapting to the changes is always time consuming; time that could and should be better spent on program improvement is instead expended on redoing the previous year's efforts.
Building the support of the community then starts anew. Each time the school changes, the opponents see a new chance to eliminate programs they do not support. Some conditional changes that occur at the switch of administrative teams occur in the areas of scheduling, finance and budget, duties, and other staff changes.
The scheduling that is set up under one team may or may not stay in place. Block time, if not understood by an incoming team, is usually among the first things to go. This leads to problems in flexibility of program design, common planning time, and program implementation.
The scheduling of team instruction outside of a block of periods causes a lack of coherence in instruction. Changes in personnel will cause the same kinds of results--personalities and interactions are important to the success of any program. Another important consideration to the effective implementation of this type of change is the necessity of leadership. Someone must be in charge and be given the responsibility to ensure that the program goes forward. When these changes occur, the program, no matter how well-intentioned or structured, will not succeed.
School-District
The matter of budget is another item of importance to the success of the plan. WITHOUT MONEY, nothing gets done. If you want a program to be a success, you must fund it adequately. Money for staff inservice, common planning, duty release, adequate instructional support, and materials must be included. The time for the program to work must also be included. No change will be successful overnight. If adequate time for program evaluation is allowed, success will not be achieved.
Factors Beyond our Control
Other considerations the team did not anticipate were those that involved the student population mobility, the changes that would occur within the school district, weather (as it related to shareholder meetings), union rules, and the day-to-day problems of teaching in an urban setting.
We at South Division have historically had a large student mobility rate. It is not uncommon for a quarter of the school population to move in a given school year. This is largely due to the type of economic area we are located in. It is a transitional neighborhood; it has new immigrants, working poor, shifting nationalities, and all the other problems of any urban area. The student population we teach has had a large dropout rate for many reasons--some for which we are given the blame and some for which we have no responsibility. The perception by some in the community is that we are not "culturally connected" to our students, whatever that implies.
It is hard to teach students that are not there, nor should we be expected to solve the gang and violence problems that exist in this area. We can and should provide some stability for our students; this means that, in the ideal situation, we should provide all parts of the AAI in all four years of the program. As mentioned, the program we anticipated would have been a comprehensive package to promote Milwaukee and Wisconsin throughout the nation and eventually globally; yet, when reality set in, we found that smaller is better. A few well-chosen projects would suffice to give our students an introduction to all parts of the AAI program.
For the students that stay with us for the full four-year program, the success rate is better than average for the school as a whole. (See the demographic data in the introduction.) We also have come to the realization that not all projects can or even must be taught by all members of the team. A common commitment must be included to teaching about all parts of AAI by all team members.
Union
The union contract gives little latitude in the assignment of teachers to schools in this district. There is a provision for making transfers, but the actual hiring of personnel is left to central administration. The transfer of teachers to open positions in the system is controlled by seniority, resulting in the senior person being selected for open positions even if he or she is not necessarily the best qualified person.
Other union considerations are in the areas of length of the school day, number of classes taught, requirements for prep and lunch, as well as planning time and compensation (once again, not all are roadblocks). There is a protection for teachers under this contract that we are not willing to surrender to arbitrary administrative decisions and tenure protection. There are those who would give these protections away; we, however, do NOT wish to dispose of them.
Despite these many barriers, we continue to move forward, redesigning our plan and working to better utilize AAI. As part of this project, we designed a wish list for what we hope our program will eventually look like. In this next section, we describe our dream program and what it would take to make this a reality, including the roles of students, parents, teachers, administration, advisory committees, and political interest groups.