By Cynthia Bruce
On July 13-15 at the Kansas City Convention Center in Kansas City, Mo., NCRA exhibited at the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) conference. The conference theme was “Fired Up!” and NCRA worked to ignite passion and enthusiasm for the profession. This conference brought together nearly 5,000 school counselors from across the nation to explore innovative approaches to counseling and learn about nontraditional career paths. What better way to get them “fired up” than to have Kimberly Greiner, RDR, CRR, CRC, and Carol Swartz demonstrate their steno skills over the three-day event? Lisa Dennison, NCRA A to Z® Coordinator, and I manned the exhibit table as interested counselors came to our table to ask “How do they do that?”
Exhibiting at the conference offered a unique opportunity to engage with school counselors and to showcase the value of stenography. As Grenier says, “Our career is still an unknown gem and needs these opportunities to be discovered.” We were able to engage in meaningful conversations and demonstrate how court reporting and captioning should be career paths for their students. Counselors asked great questions and were very interested in having a court reporter or captioner attend their career days. NCRA will be reaching out to state associations when schools make the request. As Swartz commented, it’s amazing when court reporters and captioners can educate others “on what a rewarding career it is, the high demand for court reporters, the great income potential, and the wide variety of different areas of stenography such as working in the courtroom, as a freelancer, a captioner, et cetera.”
NCRA has attended this conference for several years and has collected more than 1,000 contacts. By participating as a vendor at the ASCA conference, NCRA is able to have a presence within the secondary education community. We will add our new contacts to our biannual newsletter aimed specifically at high school counselors to educate them on the court reporting and captioning professions and to encourage enrollment in the NCRA A to Z® Intro to Steno Machine Shorthand program.
The ASCA conference is a great opportunity to position court reporting and captioning as valuable educational choices in front of the professionals dedicated to recommending career paths to students. If you’d like to help inspire others to learn more about the professions, consider volunteering next year when the conference is in Long Beach, Calif., on July 12-15, 2025. California court reporters and captioners, NCRA will be calling!
Cynthia Bruce, M.S. Ed, is NCRA Senior Director of Certification and Education. She can be reached at cbruce@ncra.org.
For more information on the NCRA A to Z Intro to Steno Machine Shorthand program, contact Lisa Dennison, NCRA A to Z® Coordinator, at atozprog@ncra.org.
