Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 10, 1993 TAG: 9306090373
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURA WILLIAMSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He then promptly announced that he wanted to become vice president of BMW.
That raised a few eyebrows.
It also raised his grade.
"He was smooth, wasn't he?" commented Betsy McClearn, assistant principal of curriculum at Salem High School, where Cunningham was completing a course in career communications last week. The interview with teachers and local business leaders (none of whom noticed the sneakers) will become part of his final grade.
"I was impressed with Hunter," McClearn said. "And so were the other teachers."
Impressed - that's not a word teachers often apply to "average" students. But academically, that's where Cunningham falls, McClearn said. He belongs to a group of students referred to by educators as "the forgotten half."
They are the students who don't take advanced placement courses, who don't become National Merit Scholars. But neither do they require remedial work or special education.
When it comes to school, they generally do . . . OK. Just well enough, said McClearn, to be overlooked.
And that's no longer OK with Salem High School, said 12th-grade English teacher Judy Pitts.
"About three years ago, the English department realized we were not serving kids in the general track effectively," she said.
That is, they weren't teaching the kinds of skills students needed after high school, an area in which Virginia schools have made little progress in recent years. State "report cards" issued to school divisions for the past three years show fewer students completing vocational programs and a drop last year in the number learning to type.
The number of students acquiring basic reading and math skills - another measure of work preparedness - has remained nearly constant. Roughly 20 percent of the state's 11th-graders lack these skills.
Salem's career communications course is one effort to combat that. But it's not the only solution area schools have tried.
Concern over the number of students ill-prepared for the work force spawned a valleywide job fair three years ago, said Lou Talbutt, guidance director for the Roanoke school system. The fair has become an annual event, which teachers and guidance counselors use as an opportunity to teach resume writing and interview skills.
Other programs throughout the valley include apprenticeships, job shadowing, work-ethics seminars and school-business partnerships that emphasize team teaching and team problem solving. The city recently extended its Junior Achievement program into the elementary schools, following the theory that "career development is a lifelong process," said schools spokesman Lissy Runyon.
Pitts said Salem began a review three years ago of programs in other school districts aimed at serving the students who might be headed for college - though not for the Ivy League - or walking straight into the work force.
"We want these kids headed somewhere," McClearn said. "We don't want them leaving us and doing nothing."
McClearn and Pitts found part of what they were looking for at a research center in Waco, Texas. Teachers wrote the rest of the curriculum themselves.
Then, just as they got their pilot program going, McClearn ran smack into what it was missing - the business community.
McClearn met Jack Kirby, a systems engineer for General Electric, at a Parent Teacher Association meeting last fall. Kirby told her about a career program GE provided at Roanoke County's Northside and Glenvar high schools.
Kirby said the GE program was a perfect fit for Salem's curriculum, because the school focused on technical writing. That's a skill many entering today's work force lack.
"We saw a lot of young engineers who couldn't write a decent memo, who couldn't effectively communicate at a meeting," said Doug Phares, another GE engineer who helps teach the Salem classes.
Phares and Kirby show students enrolled in career communications - a two-year course beginning in the 11th grade - how to write resumes, prepare for interviews and communicate with their co-workers.
That fits right in with the goal of the course, which is to teach students how to listen, speak and write more effectively, Pitts said.
The course continues to teach classic literature, McClearn said, but with a greater emphasis on English skills needed to succeed in a competitive job market. The course culminates with the interview, in which students present portfolios containing highlights of their academic and extracurricular achievements.
Phares said Salem's course addresses his company's concerns over finding qualified graduates it can turn into able employees.
"GE has an aging work force," he said. "Somebody has to replace these people."
Somebody, but not Cunningham. The state vocational-contest champion and one of Salem's star football players has other plans. After he earns an associate degree from Wyoming Technical Institute, he wants to be an area representative for BMW, then work his way to the top.
"I don't want to be a wrench-turner for the rest of my life," he said. "I want to get into the management field and excel in it."
by CNB