Because Bryan Schuerman has two careers to maintain and because he’s a full-time student in the Ball State Online master’s in career and technical education, his feet hit the floor squarely each morning at 2 a.m.

From 2:30 a.m. until 12 noon, he works as weekday morning and mid-day meteorologist for WICS ABC News Channel 20 and WRSP FOX Illinois in Springfield, Illinois, prepping his forecasts and taping cut-ins for Good Morning America. He goes live from 5 to 7 a.m. on ABC and 7 to 8 a.m. on FOX. He also fills in as lifestyle anchor and producer.

His work has earned the coveted National Weather Association Weathercaster Seal of Approval.

Then He Heads to Class

From the studio, Bryan heads to his second career as a family and consumer science teacher at a nearby high school, where he teaches nutrition and culinary arts classes from 12 to 3:30 p.m.

“For professionals like myself who are juggling not one, but two careers, I can fit in the time to make a degree happen at my pace,” he says, of the CTE program offered fully online.

“After I got my teacher’s license and graduated with my master of education degree, I always kept an eye out for any family and consumer science teacher postings,” says Bryan.

Among multiple areas, Bryan is certified to teach middle school science for grades 5-9, journalism, radio and TV broadcasting for grades 9-12, and family and consumer sciences 5-12.

CTE Program is Filling in the Blanks

He says the family and consumer sciences license provided just a “snippet” of what is needed to teach family and consumer sciences.

“This program is helping me ‘fill in the blanks’ that I did not get specifically from family and consumer sciences to make me a more, well-rounded teacher,” says Bryan, who is pursuing the family and consumer sciences concentration.

Ball State’s program is ideal, he says, for people who want “the basics of how to administer a CTE program, as well as instructional strategies to make us better educators in the classroom.”

“CTE Encompasses Many Careers”

He’s also learning how comprehensive the CTE field can be.

“I have interacted and shared learning experiences with students who are teaching dental assistant classes, audiology classes and more,” says Bryan. “While the course work we are learning in this program is broad enough to encompass all types of career and technical education, the professors let us take that knowledge and apply it to what we are individually teaching.”

The pandemic has been a factor, he says. Through online forums, his classmates are sharing their experiences of teaching career and technical education courses remotely for the first time.

“We all know, we are ‘writing the playbook’ for remote learning right now,” says Bryan. “So listening to ideas from other classmates and bouncing my experiences off them has been a very pleasant experience.”