editors’ note editor-in-chief
Diane Godwin
Managing Editor
CONNECTIONS Contributors
Writer, Editor Writer, Editor Writer
heather wainwright diane godwin
Writer Designer, Photographer
Amanda Bolan
Designer, Photographer
joey brennan
Want your school featured
in Connections?
We want to hear about your success stories, awards and program accomplishments. If you have a story idea, please contact Kristen Dechert at kristen. dechert@rcu.msstate.edu. The photos you see throughout this issue are Mississippi students. If you want your school photographed for the Connections library, please contact Amanda Bolan at amanda.bolan@rcu.msstate. edu.
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Connections Fall 2012
Mississippi students are finding that career and technical education classes enhance traditional academics and lead to a path filled with prosperity when pursuing a four-year or two-year degree or a national certification. Case-in-point is the story of Wesley Haney (p.14), who used CTE to find his passion and to secure future career advancement and achievement. This draws attention to a very important point: Success can be found down alternative academic pathways. In fact, according to a recent report from the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, there are 29 million middle-skills jobs in the country that pay $35,000-$75,000 on average and don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Now, many of us who work closely with CTE wouldn’t find that surprising, but the parents of the students we serve and many others in the state often don’t recognize the value of a CTE education. We hope you’ll take the opportunity each time it is presented to share these CTE success stories and to promote the value of the programs to education and economic development in Mississippi. When we were putting this issue of Connections together, we were excited to see stories of high-achieving students with interests from almost every CTE program and extracurricular area imaginable. Culinary Arts students in West Point are cooking up a delicious lunch for their peers twice a week (p. 8) while Construction students in Wayne County are building a brand new Culinary Arts lab from the ground up (p. 16). Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world,” and that is just what is happening in Petal, where 27 Health Sciences students have trained nearly 3,000 community members on CPR techniques (p. 10), and in New Albany, where a group of Family and Consumer Sciences students are partnering with their special-needs peers to help them become more integrated into the mainstream student body (p. 22). And the past few months have brought big news for educators as well, one of which is a new counseling model (p. 5). From the top-five lists on using Twitter and technology in the classroom, to our very first CTE profile on veteran teacher Janice Gardner, we hope you thoroughly enjoy this issue of Connections. And that you share it with your friends and colleagues to show them the value of CTE as well!
Diane Godwin Editor-in-Chief
Kristen Dechert Managing Editor