Laura Foley, Oregon’s new State CTE Director, has viewed her entire professional career, which has included being a social worker, a small business owner and an educator, through a social justice lens.
“My equity lens is always, ‘Who’s paying attention?’” Foley said.
That’s because Foley, who was the first in her family to graduate from high school, was once a child who fell in between state systems and supports. She said she graduated high school with a 4.0 grade point average though sleeping through most of her classes and working 40 hours a week to help her family pay the bills. Her school guidance counselors focused on students deemed on the “college track.”
“I looked at college as a place for rich kids that was just about reading a bunch of books,” she said.
Instead, the local public library was the place she would go to teach herself what she wanted to know – for free. After a number of years, Foley would eventually go on to college, where she finished her undergraduate and master’s degrees in two and a half years.
Foley said she has spent her career trying to find the way to help the most people she can reach.
She first started working in social services, but quickly realized that the work was more reactive and intervention-focused than it was proactive. That realization led her to become a teacher, which instantly felt like a natural fit and could reach up to 300 students and their families each year.
Over the next 18 years, Foley would continue to expand her reach and impact as an instructional coach, then as an administrator and a teacher trainer. Whenever she saw a need, she would work to find a way to fill it, which is why she is now one of five K-12 reading specialists in the state and also once started her own business to design clothing for people with disabilities.
So when the position of State CTE Director became available, moving into the state administration was a natural next step for Foley. In this new post, she plans to use that same approach to ensure equity and opportunity for all students by asking “who’s paying attention” and identifying gaps that need to be filled. She sees the state’s chronic absenteeism and low graduation rates as symptomatic of larger issues.
Foley said she wants to expand career readiness so that students as young as elementary school begin to have authentic exposure to careers. Then during middle school, students are engaging in hands-on, authentic curriculum that encourages them to be creative.
“By the time they get out of high school, they should have a viable plan that they have tried for a while and have received guidance for postsecondary education to help them decide where they want to go and have a good idea what it’s going to take [to get there],” Foley said.
Foley comes into this role at an exciting time, as Oregon has made historic investments in recent years in CTE as well as science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Foley said she plans to better connect these two disciplines because there are so many natural collaboration and integration opportunities.
Andrea Zimmermann, Senior Associate, Member Engagement and Leadership Development