Power of Curriculum-Let's Get the Basics Right

Wayne describes the reasons for his over a year long hiatus from Education Matters. He also talks about the power of curriculum in regards to basic first steps and use a situation from his current role outside of traditional education to illustrate the point. 

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apologize that this has taken so long to get back on the air, just give you a little background as to what happened and why it was so long. And then I'll get into today's episode, the first part of it and my father had some health issues last summer started around Memorial Day weekend, and there was an odyssey, kind of that took up a good, good first half of the summer. So trying to figure those health issues out. But we got those straightened around and he's back in business and better than ever. And so that took some time. And the other piece of it is my my day job also took on a new twist last year. And for those that haven't heard the episodes where I explained a little bit about what I do just quick background again on that is that I work for construction companies, DDS companies, we do a lot of work with the gas utilities across New York State. Recently, the the PSC has made some changes that require how the folks that do that work are qualified and and what that process looks like. And that has taken on, it took on an entirely new life of its own here in the past year, it has taken some additional trainings, and a lot of blood, sweat and tears to keep our guys out there working and doing the work that they do so that those of you that have natural gas that comes to your house, you can benefit from that. So that brings me to today's episode. Actually, before I dive into that, though, the other thing I wanted to share is I'm going to take the podcast and expand a little bit more on the types of episodes, I have some different things that are coming up. Probably next episode is one that will seem familiar. And that is some of the where I've recommended different books on different topics. Usually around leadership, I have one more, one more episode like that, that I'm going to share and get into. Also, I'm going to expand the type of guest I've up to this point, I've really tried to keep it to school leaders. But there are some other things that I think people will find interesting out there. And hopefully I can share some of those opportunities, what that would look like, going forward. So. So let's get into today's episode on the power of curriculum, just to recap, the work that I'm currently doing, and its connection education, in order to do gas work, basically, anywhere here in the northeast, someone that's installing and putting in a natural gas line, like if you see construction workers doing their utility workers, say on a main street, and they're putting in something called main which is the larger pipe that brings the gas from faraway places to the service, which ultimately brings it into your home. To do any of that work, you have to have these, the best way to phrase them is that these these qualifications called operator qualifications, they're, they're sort of like mini skills credentials. Using the term that you hear a lot with some of the classes that are on Google or LinkedIn, or some of the other things where you get these mini credentials. The difference is, is that they're overseen by either a third party, which is the Northeast Gas Association, who has worked in conjunction with the PSE or they're tied to the utility. And that's kind of the theme today is to talk about the power of curriculum and these operator qualifications and what can go wrong. When curriculum is poor, and those of us that have been in the classroom for a while know the power of a strong curriculum, and especially if there has not been input in the development of that curriculum. So without getting into a specific company, so that I don't put them on the spot and potentially hurt our relationship with them. I'm going to speak kind of broadly talk about an experience that we had over the course of last summer, and how that affected the outcomes. So this particular utility, decided that they were going to create their own new set of operator qualifications in talking with some of the folks that have been in the industry for a long time. That was basically the way that it used to roll. Part of the reason that this particular utility decided to go in that direction was that the PSE had told all the utilities that they wanted each utility to have more control and more oversight over the Oh queuing, or the qualifying of the contractors that worked for them. And again, a little bit more of the business model of how the utility industry works, especially on the gas side, I can't speak to the electrical side as much. But at least on the guest side, I feel like it can speak a little bit to that the basic business model has become that instead of your local utility, hiring hundreds and hundreds of employees, and paying them the rate that utility workers often get, what has happened over the last probably 30 plus years is that the utility companies have hired contractors to do a large portion of some of the new construction work and some of the repair work that they don't want to do internally, and they've kept some of the other work, they've kept very specific work for their own employees. So in order for that business model to work, it's important that those employees can get out and do that work. And, and they have costs that they have to keep down as contractors. And in the end, it benefits the consumer, the consumer, because the prices are lower. And also, you know, the work gets done, etc. There's I know, there's probably some of you thinking, you know, well, what happens utility workers and you know, and I don't want to get too far off the rails here on that piece of it. But the point is, is that the contractors, you know, do do a lot of the lion's share of some of this construction and repair that happens over the course of the lifetime of the infrastructure. So the Public Service Commission tells utilities, you need to have more control and oversight. And there are a lot of different directions and a lot of different ways that tech can look like and I was just at a meeting at Con Edison this past week. And part of the discussion was, you know, what does that look like? throughout New York State, each utility has taken a different approach to that. Some utilities have stuck with the Northeast Gas Association, which is a third party accrediting organization that has worked with the PSC. Some have done a mix where they have both the written accuse are done by the NGA. And then the hands on the hands on demonstrations are done per the utility. And then some and it's this is going getting to the point of today's show. Some have gone in the direction of saying we're going to start from scratch. And we're going to build the entire system internally. So if you work for us, you have our own queues, and only our oak only our own queues, which again, brings me back to the power of curriculum. So this particular utility, announced in January of last year, that starting April one of last year, that everyone from that point forward would need to use their company's utilities in order excuse me, accuse in order to work as a contractor for that utility. So what they did allow is they said look, you can grandfather yourself under the old system, which we dutifully did. And that took up probably the first two or three months of last year. Getting our our gentlemen qualified gentlemen and ladies qualified to continue to do that work for this particular utility. And then the rollout began of the new IQs and it became apparent very quickly that there was a disconnect in quality and substance of the materials. Now, what I tell people all the time, you know, I've learned I've learned a lot about you know, the utility business on the gas side of it, especially in the last three years but I am an expert by no means I'm learning something new every day. In fact, at this meeting at Con Edison learn some other things, especially in the in the realm of the the more urban settings like New York City because that's where the meeting was was down in Queens, but Um, my point with this is that there are smees subject matter experts that we as trainers lean on to help train new individuals. I'm very comfortable with prepping people for tests and delivering kind of a written curriculum or, you know, a test based curriculum. I'm a little shaky, or in the ins and outs of how you actually put pipe together, for instance, Are there parts of it that I'm very comfortable with other parts that I always defer to our SMEs that have a lot more experience with it. So it became clear to both myself and especially my SMEs, that some of the material in this curriculum did not cover what really needed to be taught, when it came to putting pipe together, etc. And what also was clear is that there wasn't, there was an awful lot of secrecy for lack of a better term. And I don't think it was intentionally meant to be secretive. But the frustration became is that the way that the OQ process works now is that we, it's, it strikes me is kind of interesting, because it goes against anything that any of us that have worked in education for a long time have, we would never, in fact, if if I had teachers that rolled like this, we would have had a problem. But basically, this was this is the deal. On this OQ process. Now, there are these questions are called critical AOCs. And they're about the things that can go wrong in putting pipe together about the status of the infrastructure, or a variety of different circumstances. If you miss a single question, you fail, you can have a 95% going into that task. But if you miss one of those questions, you're done. I think it misses the forest for the trees. And a lot of ways it clearly misses the fact that there is a tremendous amount of information and none of this information is in a vacuum. And to just say to someone, especially someone that is just getting into the business, if you miss one of these questions, you're done. This is important work. And safety is very important. Of course it is. I don't believe this is the way to get there. But the PSH o or the PSE, excuse me chose this route. So in fairness to this utility that I have given a hard time to for the last year now. Well, you're in change. In fairness, they're they're put a little bit into a box as well. But when you develop a curriculum, and those of you that have developed curriculum that are listening to this, no, you know, it's a collaborative effort. And that was the one thing that we noticed, wasn't happening. And when we tried to reach out and tried to give suggestions were shot down. In fact, I think it even hurt us as a company for a while, because we were reaching out and saying, Hey, this is not lining up, we have guys failing this. And by the way, to put this in perspective, and this is this is why I get passionate about this. If someone, especially someone new to the industry, if they can't pass one, these two tests to get you into the industry, if you can't pass that you potentially aren't working anymore. Let me say that, again. Two tests, you can't pass them, you may be out of a job. For experienced individuals, I think it's important to remember as well, for those that have a lot of experience in the industry. That, you know, it's not a guarantee. These are folks that I recognize from my years in education. You know, these are not strong test takers. These guys are nervous. These are big, strong, burly guys that would not think twice about rustling a bear or anything else. That would terrify anyone, you know, most of us, but the thought of sitting there and taking a test and having so much on the line. And when we talk about high pressure tests, this is kind of that ultimate high pressure test. And not being able to collaborate on that really led to some, some very long and hard and some very poor outcomes. So one of the things when we talk about the power of curriculum, one of the pieces to this, I think is collaboration and working with a variety of folks when develop that, to try to put the best product out there. That's the first thing. I think the other piece to this when we talk about developing good curriculum is also incorporating a variety. Again, we call them SMEs, but people that have been familiar with the subject know the ins and outs of it. And I've been told that they there was some consultation on that. But it was clear in many cases that someone there wrote this, and wrote the materials for this clearly did not have the best understanding of what the work look like. And this was one of the arguments that we made with the utility at the time is, we said we had, you know, 40 year veterans, one of our smees, he was a 40 plus year veteran, take some of their materials and failed the first time out. Now, you, you know, you could break some of this off sometimes to a bad day, or this or that. But to me, that's telling that someone that has been in the industry for 40 years, that has experience teaching this curriculum as well, getting others prepared for this curriculum, and they fail. That tells me there's something wrong with the either the presentation of the material, or what's in the material, or the test questions, etc, themselves. So there were really two kinds of issues that were going on. One was that the materials were lacking and being able to really set someone up for success. There were review sheets, and I can't tell you the number of meetings, I sat in where someone said, well, let's write in the review sheet. Well, it might be and it might be very clear to the person that wrote those review sheets. But the language and the connections between that review sheet and what was on the test were very different. And that clarity, I think that's also a very important piece to that simple clarity, keeping it simple in terms of a good curriculum, you know, and those of I remember some of the curricula that came out, especially from the state, there was so much that was in a particular period of history, for instance, saying that all of that was fair game. I always thought was wrongheaded. You know, this was something that I think is still a case in education. And that is it's a mile wide, but an inch deep. I think sometimes keeping it simple, going into some depth, you'd be better served. And and I think that happened a little bit here is that in the rush to comply with the PSC, and to be their own unique entity, this particular utility created a situation where they had, you know, some depth in some categories, scant depth in areas where it was really critical in terms of understanding, especially for someone that was brand new to the business. And then on top of that errors, and again, this is a simple thing. But I think when we talk about the development of curriculum, I chuckle as I say it even proofreading I can't tell you the number of times that we would use the materials from this particular utility because they told us we had to. And there would be mistake after mistake, whether it was mistakes in the process of a particular installation, for instance, or just simple typos and grammatical errors that caused confusion in terms of being able to present that I mean, their statements, I mean, these and again, these are going out 1000s of people are seeing these materials, it was clear, they weren't proof read. And it really took away a lot from the delivery of those materials, you know, so it takes a high stakes situation. And now you can't count on the materials that are associated with it. And you haven't been collaborated with an order and the development to know exactly what they're trying to get out. And it leads to the outcomes that we were having. Now, I will say in the past few months that this utility has started to come around and started to collaborate more and has listened to the both impact and wanting to elicit input on these materials, especially as they saw, you know, our training program was solid for years going into this change, and it's still a strong training program. And I would say probably one of the stronger ones in the state. And they recognize that. So it's, it's nice to, I wouldn't say that we're an equal partner by any stretch, but that we at least are listened to in some quarters. Again, I think when it comes to that curriculum development and the power of a strong curriculum, that development has to come from collaboration, it has to have strong subject matter experts. Not just people that know the content broadly. But specifically, that can tell you this can stay this can go and then proofread and communicate it clearly. When you have those basic elements in the development of your curriculum. And there's a lot of you know, there's we could do a whole season just on writing curriculum. But when you start with these basics, I think you're going to put yourself in a much stronger position for solid outcomes. All right, well, that will wrap us up for this episode of education matters. Thanks for tuning in. And again, all apologies for the long hiatus. It will not be as long between the next episode I'm going to try to get back on that every two weeks. And I look forward if there is go to Edge education matters new york.com If you want to send emails with comments, and enjoy the great weather out there, it looks like the rain that has been plaguing us is finally starting to back off and we're starting to get a little taste of summer. This has been education matters New York. I'm your host Wayne Ackles. And this is a fail Wolverine productions. Take care and have a great rest of the week.