Women in Technology Education
Why Technology Education?

Jody S. Miller
Technology Education Teacher
Penncrest High School

When people ask me how I got into technology education, I always have to go back to college.  If I did not choose Millersville University, I probably never would have become a technology education teacher.  Millersville University is one of the select Pennsylvania universities that offer technology education.

Becoming a technology education teacher was not my first career path.  In college, I was an art major with an emphasis in commercial art (graphic design).  As a commercial art major, there were some suggested classes to take in the technology education program.  Some of the advised classes to take were the following: engineering drafting, desktop publishing, photography, and various communication classes.  I took all the classes offered in the communications umbrella in the technology education program, graduating with a Bachelors of Arts degree with twelve art classes and thirteen technology education classes.  Little did I know that later in life that would eventually take me into a vast field of technology.  (It also helped that my roommate was an industrial technology major specializing in graphics.)

After college, I worked for a temporary agency that focused on graphic design job placement.  I worked for various companies.  My longest and favorite was the Franklin Mint.  I worked in the pre-press department as a typesetter.  The mint said they would hire me full time.  As time passed, there was no offer and I was laid off.  That is when I decided to change careers and that I wanted to teach.

The decision was made and I was applying to school again.  The question was what subject was I going to teach: art or technology education?  I talked to an old professor from Millersville.  The encouragement and enthusiasm he gave me made my decision easy.  In addition, knowledge of a 100 percent job placement certainly influenced my decision.  I went back to school full time for two long years.  I knew that as a female, I would be a minority, but my previous technology education experiences had prepared me for that and I felt comfortable.  In addition, I feel that being older (26) helped make it easier.

Currently, I am teaching in a modular laboratory in a high school setting (Penncrest High School, Delaware County).  My students consist of mainly ninth and tenth graders.  I do get upper classmen mixed into my classes.  (This is an elective class.)  The lab is set up with fifteen different stations.  All stations are focused on technology education.  The students run through a 12-day cycle at each station.  The students learn to take notes as they go through each station.  The students are responsible for all projects that are produced at certain stations.  They include video, animation, CAD drawings, radio broadcasting tapes, and Quark Xpress documents.  At the end of each module, the students must write an essay on what they learned.

During my first year of teaching, there were only a few girls enrolled in technology education classes at Penncrest.  The next year, there were more, about 45 girls and 55 boys in the modular lab.  I attribute the increase in females to my being a female role model, because nothing else has changed! The graphics classes have always had a good representation of females, but not the materials classes.  (Editor’s note: If she taught some of those classes, would it make a difference in female enrollment?)

This summer, I worked on curriculum for the new course I am now teaching: photography.  This course has not been offered before at our school.  I am sure that as the year progresses, it will become more challenging and fulfilling.

In conclusion, I am very happy about my career choice of technology education.