Granton's Business Ed Teacher Discusses Unique Classes

Monday, March 1st, 2021 -- 11:08 AM

The Granton School District’s Business Ed Teacher is providing unique classes to Granton’s students.

In our continuing interview series, I spoke with Granton’s Interim Administrator James Kuchta and Granton Business Ed Teacher Ryan Westaby and they discussed some of those classes in more detail.

Mr. Kuchta:  “Ryan Westaby is our Business Ed Teacher, among several other roles, at Granton School District.  Ryan is also our Crystal Apple Teacher of Distinction this year.  He wears several hats here at Granton.”

Ryan:  “I am the Business Education Teacher here at Granton.  Of course, being a small school I cover everything from a 2nd grader to a Senior.  At the Elementary levels, I teach Computer Application skills being able to get logged on to the computer, use the mouse at the very beginning with some of them and get into typing skills and even some coding."

"I’m currently working through a coding section with the 2nd graders right now and getting them used to what is called “scratch coding,” so it’s the very basic fundamentals type of learning for coding.”

“In middle school, I do a 6-week rotation with them.  Teaching, again, some typing skills along with coding for the 6th graders.  I give them an introduction to some yearbook type work in the 7th grade and then we do some personal finance in the 8th grade preparing them for the Real Life Academy they typically go to, although, this year, I don’t think they’ve had that opportunity.”

“At the High School level, I teach Accounting, Personal Finance, Intro to Marketing, Intro to Business, Intro to Web Design.  So, we do some coding again with HTML and CSS, teaching the basics of websites.  Kinda the backbone to that."

"There’s the Publication Class that we do yearbook in.  They design the yearbook, get all the pictures, they solicit advertising from local businesses.  Everything like that to go along with selling it.  And there’s probably a couple classes that I’m forgetting about off the top of my head.”

“Along with that, I’m, or course, the Yearbook Advisor that goes along with that part of the job.  I’m the Technology Integrator, a new position this year with the school district.  Just going around helping teachers and students when they have software related questions with the computers."

"Which has happened this year as we’ve expanded to that 1:1 computer to student ratio.  And just really starting to integrate that, that technology side into the different classrooms helping teachers, as they get different products, to learn how to use them and be able to better teach our students especially as we’re doing the blended style of learning where we have students in house, student on-line and virtual all at the same time.”

“I’m the School Assessment Coordinator, so I work with the District Assessment Coordinator and we line up all the different tests that the state says that we have to do.  Scheduling them, making sure that they’re being taken, and following all the different rules that take place with that."

"I’m the Distance Learning Facilitator, so I’m the point of contact for all of our students that are taking college classes out of Granton where they will usually take them through our Distance Learning Room via the online system set up through CESA 10 for us."

"They get college credit and high school credit all at the same time at no cost to them.  It’s a great benefit that some of our students are really taking advantage of.”

Mr. Kuchta:  “Ryan, could you expand on the coding?  It’s a relatively new curriculum over the past few years and we have our kids as young as 2nd grade getting an introduction to computer coding and going all the way through High School.”

Ryan:  “Coding has become one of those jobs that is a high demand job.  The last numbers that I saw were 10 or 15 thousand open positions in the State of Wisconsin alone.  Companies need them for all kinds of different areas.  And there’s a lot of different coding languages that are out there."

"So, at the 2nd grade level, there is some free curriculum out there from code.org, which a lot of schools have really gotten into.  It’s kind of a basic coding type of thing as far as the language goes.  It’s a lot of go left, go right, go up, go down type of things."

"One of the reasons that I really enjoy teaching coding to the students is that it teaches them it’s okay to be wrong.  Because as you’re coding, you put in what you think needs to happen and they try it and it doesn’t work.”

Mr. Kuchta:  “So, now the learning process begins.”

Ryan:  “Right!  And it gets them comfortable with that learning process because now, rather than experiencing it in a classroom where they feel like they failed, when I’m teaching it, I purposely fail as I’m first introducing it to them.  Because I like them to look at it and go, ‘Wow, Mr. Westaby isn’t perfect at this either, so it’s okay if I get it wrong.’”

Mr. Kuchta:  “Could you talk about your years teaching, your experience, how many years at Granton and all these things you’ve done.  Many great things, but it’s been in a relatively short amount of time.”

Ryan:  “This is my 6th year, overall, teaching.  I’m a little bit different from other teachers in that I have 10 years of experience in the business world having worked for a nation wide leasing company, a local community bank, and one of the larger health systems in the area."

"I had always considered teaching, so I got tired of sitting in an office by myself and I decided to go back to teaching.  I went through something called Project Teaching to get my license.  I spent a year in Independence getting my feet wet after having that crash course that is your one semester of student teaching.”

“I was a long term sub at Independence.  That was a good opportunity to start to understand everything else that goes into it.  How to handle curriculum and timing it out and things like that that you kinda learn during that 1st semester, but you have someone there to help you."

"I would definitely say that year before I got to Granton, because I’ve been at Granton now for 4 years, my 2nd year of teaching I did substitute teaching and that was a huge benefit because you learn classroom management very quickly as a sub."

"You need to be able to walk into a room and have the students respect you and be in control of it and I learned how to do that that year.  From there, I’ve been at Granton for the 4 years and have really just enjoyed my time in getting to know the students."

"It’s one of the huge benefits of having a slightly smaller school district like this because you get to know all the kids rather than my student teaching semester when I was at Eau Claire North and there were 1,600 students in the building.”

Mr. Kuchta:  “Right, much different.  We’re fortunate to have Mr. Westaby our Business Education Teacher and wearing many different hats.  Again, congratulations on earning the Crystal Apple Teacher of Distinction Award this year.  We’re proud to have you as part of our staff and appreciate, very much, everything you do.”

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.