Saturday, June 06, 2009 9:38 AM
Right-Mind
2009 Teacher of the Year Bemoans the Loss of VoTech
2009 Teacher of the Year, Anthony Mullen, spent 21 years as a New York City cop before starting his second career as a special education teacher — working with the same kinds of kids he once arrested.
Teacher Magazine has a great interview with Mullen, focusing on dropout prevention:
It’s important that every student gets an academic background, but we’ve lost vocational education. Most of our high schools are geared towards getting students into college. And yet we have this population of students—millions of students, literally—who want to do what our ancestors have done for thousands of years: They want to work with their hands. They don’t want to sit in a desk all day. They want to build, they want to create, they want to design. And we’re losing that because we’re so concerned that they take the extra science, the extra math, the extra history and all these things to go to college when all these vocational opportunities are passing them by.
I couldn’t have said it any better.
HT: Joanne Jacobs