Short takes
- Auto shop academy teaches more than mechanics
- Tele-trips take kids out of their world
- Adkins Scholars Program prepares students for college success
Auto shop academy teaches more than mechanics
If you want proof that teaching kids a trade can transform their lives, you don’t have to look further than the case of Daniel Rodriguez. When the chronically truant student applied for admission to San Clemente High School’s Auto Technology Partnership Academy three years ago, he was going nowhere fast.
“I was planning to drop out of school,” says Rodriquez, now 20. “I was in trouble.”
With a GPA that hovered under 1.0 and 89 unexcused absences, Rodriguez did not have the qualifications that academy chief Robert McCarroll was looking for. “I told him straight out that I didn’t think he could make it,” says McCarroll. “But he begged for a chance. He loved cars and said he could turn things around.”
Today, McCarroll is a believer. Not only did Rodriguez demonstrate a gift for mechanics, he also made huge improvements academically. By attending summer school, taking night and weekend classes and staying late for tutoring every afternoon, Rodriguez made up a year’s worth of failed courses so that he could graduate on time, earning an overall GPA of 2.36.
“I applied to the auto tech academy because I didn’t want to disappoint my mother by dropping out of school,” Rodriguez says. “Once I got in, I stuck with it. My mom and the teachers pushed me. If I hadn’t stayed in school, I would probably be working some dead-end job; maybe I’d already have kids.”
Instead, Rodriguez, who immigrated to California from Mexico with his parents, has a steady job at the Capistrano VW Dealership. He is taking classes at the Irvine Valley Community College, hoping eventually to earn a degree in mechanical engineering. “I feel I can be an example for my younger brother,” he says.
McCarroll says stories like this illustrate how much some students can benefit from vocational and industrial arts education, programs that have experienced a dramatic decline in an era when all students are being urged to take a college preparatory curriculum.
San Clemente is one of two high schools in the Capistrano Unified School District to operate an industrial shop program. San Clemente’s auto tech students have won top honors in the Orange County trouble-shooting competition five times in the last decade and finished in the top 10 in national competition. The California School Boards Association awarded the academy a Golden Bell Award for excellence last year.
McCarroll hangs on because the students inspire him. “Talk about an improvement in self-esteem,” McCarroll says. “You can’t believe what a difference that kind of success can make in a young person’s life.”
Greg Adams, fixed operations director at Capistrano VW, sits on the academy board and is a big supporter of the program. “Every high school needs a program like this,” he says. “Good technicians are very hard to come by. And it doesn’t just benefit kids who want to go into the trades. It can help motivate very skilled, very talented, yet very bored kids who are misdirected into traditional academic programs.”
Tele-trips take kids out of their world
Think how most students’ lives would be enriched if they could go on field trips to places like the Smithsonian or the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., NASA Space Center in Houston, the Bronx Zoo or the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Civics would come alive as students question their state’s representatives in the Senate about the laws being shaped in the Capitol. Budding scientists and astronauts could thrill at a tour of a space shuttle. Young artists might find their inspiration from the strokes of Van Gogh or Rousseau.
Taking an entire school of kids on a cross-country trip would be a nightmare of logistics, never mind the cost. But some schools are bringing the benefits of field trips to their students by bringing the destination back home through video teleconferencing.
Dr. Helene Cunningham, principal of Brea Junior High in Southern California, sent some of her students and teachers in May to visit the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. But those who couldn’t afford the trip met up with the others during interactive video “field trips.” Through a live, real-time digital teleconference, students actually at the museum shared their experiences and answered questions from the students assembled back home.
“The students can ask questions and hear their own friends talk about what they’ve learned,” says Cunningham. “It’s just like we’re talking on the phone, but we can see each other.”
This is how it works: a video camera and television monitor at each site allows participants to see, hear and respond to one another. And unlike satellite or Internet relays which can cause jerking or delayed images, digital video teleconferencing is as smooth as the live action.
Brea Junior High received a grant to help cover the cost of the trips, and the RoseTel company donated the $15,000 system for the school’s use. The school pays for the telecommunications service. The venture may be a bit pricey, but Cunningham recommends it, especially if the school can obtain a corporate grant.
“It isn’t always possible to take students across the country or to the beach to see the whales. But through a phone call and a TV and the RoseTel system, they get to put theory to practice,” she says.
Several telephone companies offer video teleconferencing capabilities. A growing list of zoos, museums, and even Congress offer video field trips to school groups.
“There are so many possibilities,” says Cunningham, who plans 15 video trips this year. “You just have to be creative.”
Adkins Scholars Program prepares students for college success
The process of finding, applying to and getting into college – and then succeeding academically and socially – can be a harrowing experience, even for students who have all the advantages. It’s even more daunting for certain African American students who traditionally have been far less likely to go on to college than their white and Asian classmates.
For nearly 20 years, the Willie B. Adkins Scholars Program in the Vallejo City Unified School District has been working to change that. Established by the veteran educator for whom the program was later named, the Adkins Scholars Program takes a full-service approach to college readiness, that involves not only students and their teachers, but parents and representatives from the local community as well.
“One reason we’ve been so successful is that our community has just embraced the program,” says program director Joe Jones, a former Vallejo principal who is now assistant executive director of the Association of California School Administrators.
“Our school district and governing board and staff have backed it wholeheartedly.”
Adkins scholars don’t just get help with academics – although clearly those skills are crucial. The program provides emotional and social support, teaches students about college culture and norms, offers career counseling, and helps students and parents with scholarship and financial aid applications.
Parents sit on the policy-making Advisory Council. Parents and students help raise money to support the program. All students are required to perform community service as well and to attend weekly classes that cover topics ranging from test preparation and study skills to etiquette, morality and spiritual development.
Between 40 and 60 Adkins Scholars are chosen each year from among the ninth- through 12th-grade applicants who attend Bethel, Vallejo and Hogan High schools. Each year, scholars take a weeklong trip to California colleges and Historic Black Colleges elsewhere in the country to get a firsthand taste of the college experience.
The program works so well that every Adkins Scholar in the class of 2002 was accepted to two or more colleges and 80 percent were awarded at least one scholarship. The Adkins program received a Golden Bell Award from the California School Boards Association last year for its excellent results.
Financed in part by state grants, district subsidies and community donations, the scholars program also relies on a network of volunteers, including district administrators and teachers and representatives from community fraternities, sororities and churches.
“Volunteer staff and former Adkins scholars come back year after year,” Jones says. “That’s one of the strengths of the program. We couldn’t do this without all the support we get from the parents, teachers, our school board, the district and the community.”