Local 150

On December 2nd I had the opportunity to participate in the open house at Local 150 in Wilmington. Local 150 in conjunction with the Wilco Area Career Center will offer an opportunity for 10-15 high school seniors to learn at the Wilmington facility during the 2010-2011 school year. During the open house the guests were treated to a tour of the building and an overview of the heavy equipment program. Eligible students are required to apply to get into the program and must meet GPA requirements and attendance targets. Once they make it through the initial application process they will be interviewed and go through a mechanical exercise at the facility.

During the tour the instructors at the facility talked about the curriculum that the students would be learning. It was amazing to hear all of the very complex mathematics and physics the students would be learning, things such as Ohm's Law and Pascal's Law. Of course these students will be learning largely by "application" and not just the theory of the laws. Everything that I heard that night from the professional laborers confirmed the same research that ACT recently published. In their report they stated that students going to college and those going to the workforce need the same skills to be successful. It seems that even though the evidence is very clear, we too often (in education) lower the bar for students not going to a 4-year university.

Many of the students that attended the open house that night were very excited about the opportunity to try and participate in this program. Some even remarked that it would give them a new focus to try and improve their grades so they would be eligible. That should always be our goal as educators, to try and get our students to reach their maximum potential--whether they be college bound our work place bound.

My "thanks" in this blog posting goes out to Dave. I learned this week that Dave will be leaving our school community to return to Washington. Dave has made a huge impression upon all of us. I have never met a kinder or more humble person. I will miss Dave tremendously but I'm just a better person for having met him. Best wishes Dave-God Bless.

Thanks for reading
Tammy