The Case for a Vo-Tech Teachers Institute

by Cary Brandenberger and Raymond F. Theilacker

Opening Session at the Organizational Session, May 2005. (Standing, left to right: National Fellows Cary Brandenberger and Raymond F. Theilacker, Wilmington.)

Cary Brandenberger:

Professional development programs do not, in general, adequately provide for the individual needs of teachers and students. Delaware, like other states, is grappling with this problem as we move toward compliance with the numerous NCLB regulations. The Teachers Institute model would allow us to comply with federal regulations while emphasizing the needs of teachers and students.

Delaware has six separate school districts that serve our largest city, Wilmington.

Our district, New Castle County Vocational Technical School District, NCCVT, serves approximately 3500 students from throughout New Castle County. The Teachers Institute model would provide a unique experience for our academic teachers as well as our vocational teachers. During the last summer Intensive Session one of our vocational teachers, Justin Benz, participated in the Global Warming seminar. It was an amazing experience for Justin, who runs the Environmental Landscape Technology career area at Hodgson Vo-Tech. He was able to make a link between the "academic" world and the "vocational" world. For him and for the academic teachers that attended the intensive session, this experience drove home the idea of collaboration and collegiality. It was obvious when they returned that they were inspired to teach their students the new lessons that they had created.

Our district is extremely committed to this effort, and we are trying to forge a partnership with the University of Delaware. We hope that a partnership can also be built with the other districts that serve students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Our district Superintendent, Dr. Steven Godowsky, and Assistant Superintendent, Deborah Zych, attended the October Conference with the returning fellows. We hope that in collaboration with the University of Delaware a Teachers Institute can become part of Delaware's uniqueness.

Raymond Theilacker:

Students who choose to come to school for vocational training in Delaware's technical high schools may have the notion that preparing themselves for a life of work is the ultimate and only worthy goal of their education. While training for the workforce is certainly a curricular priority in vocational education, the state mandate is that the academic rigor demanded of them be comparable to programs in any comprehensive high school. This places a practical demand, wrapped in a dilemma, in the hands of faculty; but it also creates an interesting and unique challenge: How do academic and vocational teachers train students for the workplace, while at the same time infuse them with the cultural history, literature, and scientific thought endemic to the liberal arts?

The Yale National Initiative helps answer the question. What if a culinary arts teacher, for example, studied the biology or chemistry of food, and as a result wrote a unit that helped her students make practical connections to these academic sciences? What if the Academy of Finance teacher attended a seminar in business ethics, and wrote a unit which immersed his students — aspiring accountants and real estate agents — in the morality of investment? These potential connections constitute an exciting and unique marriage of the practical to the intellectual, and the vo-tech houses the right audience — students who yearn for practical training, but who are expected to meet high academic standards. The Institute design affords interested vocational and academic staff opportunities to think toward such unique goals.

When they wrote this article in the winter of 2007, Cary Brandenberger was ELA and Spanish Instructional Specialist in the New Castle County Vo-Tech School District in Delaware, and Raymond F. Theilacker was an English teacher at Howard High School of Technology in Wilmington, Delaware. They were, respectively, the teacher Representatives for their community in 2005 and 2006-09.