CTE Director for Dixie Applied Technology College Larry Stephenson
Additional Washington County School District articles:
Larry Stephenson got his
start in career and technical
education at the age of
5 – yes, as in kindergarten.
Fifty-five years later he’s going
strong as the CTE director for Dixie Applied
Technology College in St. George, Utah.
Stephenson’s efforts during his six
decades have changed the face of CTE in
the state of Utah and played a role in the
evolution of CTE nationally from traditional
shop class to modular, student-centered
delivery of curriculum.
“My first experience with industrial arts
was as a kindergartner in a town called
Scipio, Utah,” he explained. “One day the
teacher brought in this man. We went out
into the garage and he taught us how to use
a coping saw to make these paddlewheel
boats. I was just thrilled with it.”
That led to an avid interest in formalized
woodshop in seventh grade and similar
courses all through high school and later at
Brigham Young University. During summers
he worked with his dad, a diesel mechanic.
By the time he graduated from BYU, he
was certified to teach automotive, cabinet
making, drafting, and plastics technology.
In his early years as a teacher, he
discovered the need to develop student-centered
curriculum because he didn’t have
enough tools and equipment for an entire
class of students to work on the same project
at the same time. “I learned that if you were to
write an individual learning instruction packet,
if a student could read, they could do most of
the stuff themselves, and the teacher would
act as the facilitator,” he said. “The kids who
could read well – there was no slowing them
down. That freed up the teacher, who was
able to work with the slower students who
struggled a little more.”
Stephenson’s efforts were soon recognized
by state Vocational Director Joe Luke.
“When he saw what I was doing, he said,
‘Larry, you’re doing exactly what we want to get
the whole state to do. How about if I get you
a grant and you write some learning packets
that we can share with the other teachers?’” he
recalled. “I was like, ‘Great, I’m going to write
them anyway. I might as well get paid a little bit
or at least get some assistance.’”
A few years later, he came to
Washington County School District and
again was asked to develop curriculum for
the state’s Technology, Life, and Careers
(TLC) program, which preceded today’s
CTE Introduction course. In 1987, he began
writing individual activities that included
instructions, equipment, and materials. The
units were even making their way outside
of Utah as they grew in popularity.
“I was walking through an Association
for Career and Technical Education
Conference trade show in Dallas, looked
down at this company’s booth and thought,
‘That’s my activity.’ It was exactly my
activity. They had even taken the very
drawings I had drawn. One side of me was
mad, and the other side was flattered.”
Stephenson worked with a development
team of other innovative teachers to create
32 activities and conduct summer workshops
to train CTE instructors. “The wonderful thing
about it is I got to know every junior high and
middle school shop teacher in the state. The
workshops were two weeks in length, and
they literally ate, slept, and drank what we
were doing up there.”
Eventually, Stephenson became an
assistant principal and then CTE director of
Washington County Schools. His student-centered
activities gradually began to show
their age. “I knew the day would come when
we’d have to replace all of these modules in
all these schools,” he said, so in 2006, he and
his tech ed teachers searched high and low
for companies producing modular curriculum.
“We were looking at every company and
eventually came back to Pitsco because
they had the best product. It was pricey, but
what Pitsco did with the modules is what we
always dreamed of being able to do – the
delivery system, the management system.”
CTE Teacher Walt Jones facilitated the
district’s first Pitsco lab. “At the end of the year,
I said, ‘Walt, I want your heart-of-hearts opinion
about this: good, bad, or ugly,’” Stephenson
said. “He said, ‘First of all, Larry, their support
was just awesome. Yes, I had some problems
with a few things, but I’d call them, and we
would stick with it until we resolved it.’”
The logical next step was to implement
the Pitsco program in all five of the district’s
intermediate schools. “The board questioned
me, and I said, ‘I’ve done my homework on
this.’ They saw Walt’s lab, and they were just
blown away with it. They said, ‘It’s too bad
we don’t have the money to do this in our
science classes and all these other areas.’”
Five years later, Stephenson has no
regrets about replacing his beloved activities
with Pitsco’s math- and science-laden
hands-on program.
“I look at that seventh-grade program
as an investment,” he said. “If we capture
the kids then, the rest of my CTE family of
programs is going to be healthy for years
after that. If students have a bad experience
in seventh grade, they may never take
another CTE class in their life if they can help
it. . . . It is the way to teach an exploratory
program. Period. End of discussion.”