DATE: Saturday, October 25, 1997            TAG: 9710250395

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:  145 lines

RETOOLING VO-TECH EDUCATION CHESAPEAKE'S PROGRAM STRENGTHENS THE LINKS OF TECH, ACADEMICS.

Teacher Kevin Pace is talking about what makes a better dielectric: polystyrene or polyethylene.

Student Jeremy Myers, who's building an AM-FM radio from scratch, snags volunteer Fred Culpepper with a problem: He's getting a ``flat line'' on one of his diagnostic tests.

As Culpepper and Myers tackle that challenge, Pace talks to other students about how capacitors - devices that store electrical charges - work. He compares them to lunch plates: The bigger their area, the more they hold.

Welcome to electronics class at Deep Creek High School, where students learn not only how to build a radio, but also the math and physics behind it.

It used to be that vocational education was seen as the alternative for students who couldn't cut it academically. But classes like this one and others in the district's Academic Tech Prep Program are challenging that philosophy.

The program encourages vocational ed students to take challenging academic courses while reminding academic all-stars that there's more to life than book smarts.

The program, which has been cited by the state as a model, mirrors a nationwide trend away from drawing sharp distinctions between vocational education and academics.

That separation did not serve students particularly well, said Robert F. Head, the district's program administrator for vocational and technical education.

``When they finished high school, they had a diploma and nothing else. They didn't have the academic skills they needed; nor did they have the technical skills,'' said Head, who was named the state's outstanding vocational education supervisor this year.

Increasingly, employers were complaining that high school graduates were coming to them unprepared to work. In Chesapeake, business people helped develop the curriculum. Representatives from the city's 10 largest employers meet monthly with district employees.

``As an employer, I'm looking specifically for those folks who are not going immediately on to college, for either economic or personal reasons,'' said Carolyn Orner, a member of the committee and human resources manager at Mitsubishi Chemical America.

The program, Head said, also seeks to reverse the habit of referring kids with average or below-average grades to watered-down courses because their teachers had given up hope that they could learn rigorous academic material.

``They would say, `Oh, well, they're vocational, so we'll put them in that class,' '' he said. ``To that, I say, `Bull.' ''

The emphasis on both the academic and vocational is also meant to serve academically talented students who may sometimes miss out on the more practical aspects of their future careers.

Students not only learn vocational skills in class, but also get a chance - through internships, job shadowing and mentoring programs - to see what the career they think they want is really like.

``What always amazes me is when students tell me they're going to major in accounting in college and they've never had an accounting course,'' said Linda Daughtrey, the district's supervisor of business instruction.

Sophomore Tamara Watson has already avoided that trap. She wants to pursue a career in electronics and is taking her second course on the subject in Pace's class. At 15, she's got her life planned: first community college and then the Navy - where her technical skills will put her ahead of others starting out with her.

For now, though, she's concentrating hard on the radio she's building. Normally she doesn't like to read much, but she sees the necessity of reading the technical manual, which requires that she test every step of the process by making sure her math calculations back up what she's doing on the circuit board.

``You can mess up the whole project by putting one part in backward,'' Watson said.

Pace, who this year was named the state's technology teacher of the year, said the kind of curriculum he teaches now just wasn't available to him when he was in high school.

It also wasn't available to students even a few years ago, until the district brought in business people to work with teachers on developing a curriculum that was more relevant to today's workplace.

``We had to reorganize our ideas,'' Pace said. ``What we emphasize in classes became different once we knew what the community wanted.''

That has translated throughout the curriculum as academic and vocational teachers have worked together to determine what aspects from both areas all students could benefit from, Head said. For example, technical writing is now a part of the English curriculum.

``We want them to be able to write a term paper on Shakespeare, but the employer wants them to be able to write a one-page e-mail that's clear and includes just the information they need,'' he said.

But the old bias that the stronger academic students take the ``hard'' courses and head off to a four-year college while the other students take the ``weaker'' vocational courses is hard to shake.

``We still have a lot of parents with that mentality,'' said School Board member L. Thomas Bray, who traveled throughout the country touting the program and was appointed by the governor to the state's Council on Vocational Education.

``We still need to show them that it's good to integrate. With courses like algebra II and trigonometry, you inherit a thinking process, but now you're combining that with a technical or vocational skill.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

ROBERT F. HEAD, Chesapeake's program administrator for vocational

and technical education.

[Color Photo]

CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot

Electronics teacher Kevin Pace, left, with Jeremy Myers, running a

test on a radio that Myers built.

The program

Deep Creek's Academic Tech Prep Program allows students to learn

vocational skills in class, study the underlying academic

principles, and get a taste of a career through internships.

THE PROGRAM

Chesapeake's Academic Tech Prep Program covers three areas:

business and marketing careers, engineering and technical careers,

and health and human services careers. A fourth area, focusing on

the connection between the fine arts and business, will be added

next year.

Students can choose either a 23-credit ``gold'' or 21-credit

``silver'' course of study. Students who complete the gold program

receive an advanced studies diploma along with a tech prep

certificate. Students completing the silver course receive a general

studies diploma and the certificate. Last year, almost 300 students

earned certificates along with their diplomas.

To receive the certificate, students need to complete a sequence

of courses. For example, graduates in the gold track of the health

and human services concentration will have taken algebra I and II,

geometry, biology, chemistry, government and three years of a

foreign language, as well as taking at least five tech prep courses

such as nutrition, health care technology and child care.

TO HELP

The Chesapeake schools need business owners who think they have a

thing or two to teach high school students about the world of work.

The district is looking for businesses where students could work as

interns or perhaps just observe what goes on in an average day.

``The best teacher can't teach what it's like to spend eight

hours on a job,'' said Linda Daughtrey, the district's supervisor of

business instruction.

Businesses that are interested in sponsoring scholarships or that

offer college tuition reimbursement for employees are also in

demand.

To find out how you can help, call 547-0153 and ask for Daughtrey

or Robert Head, the district's program administrator for vocational

and technical education.

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