Delaware Secretary of Education Dr. Lillian Lowery presented awards to seven NCC Vo-Tech seniors at the school district's Board of Education meeting April 27.  Top graduating students from Delaware's public high schools are nominated by their principals and selected for the honor based on a record of academic excellence and community service.

John Gooden, Vice President of M. Davis and Son, Inc., and the leadership team from GE Energy's Newark plant were honored as outstanding business partners by the NCC Vo-Tech School District at its annual Career Advisory Dinner April 23 at Delcastle.

In his role with M. Davis, Gooden has provided many on-site demonstrations, job-shadowing and co-operative employment opportunities for vo-tech students preparing for careers in the construction trades industries.  He has also donated equipment and material to vo-tech career programs, serves on the school district's Construction Trades Advisory Committee, and has hired many vo-tech graduates.  His leadership helped support the creation of the nation's first high school chapters of Associated Builders and Contractors at NCC vo-tech high schools.  

GE Solar, a manufacturer of solar panels in Newark, was honored for its support of the school district's initiative to develop green energy training programs.  The company helped launch the Junior Solar Panel Installation program this year at Hodgson and next year at Delcastle by providing textbooks and a demonstration model used to train students.  Dan Tompkins, plant manager at GE Solar, and Gooden each received a plaque of recognition from NCC Vo-Tech School Board President John Lynch and School District Superintendent Steven H. Godowsky. 

Pictured above are plant representatives from Newark's GE Solar site.

Unlike traditional technical drafting, this program will include a pre-engineering program in architectural, mechanical, and construction animation – Building Information Modeling. Technical Drafting is currently offered at Delcastle and Hodgson. All new and expanded programs will be available during the 2009-2010 school year.

Delcastle Digital Media students have won the 2009 Student2Student Mentoring Contest, sponsored by SkillsUSA. Delcastle-produced podcasts of stories written by local elementary students are the basis for the award.

MyiStorybook.com is a website of podcasts of elementary school students reading stories they have written into a voice track, while viewing their drawings of the story in the video portion of the podcast.  Delcastle Digital Media students visited local elementary schools with Macintosh laptops and recorded the students reading their stories. They also took drawings the students created to illustrate their stories and scanned them into software. 

The end product is a podcast of the elementary students' voice reading their own story featuring their own illustrations. The podcasts are then uploaded on the web.

Gary Phillips, Digital Media instructor, and a Digital Media student representing the team have been invited to attend the Skills USA National Leadership and Skills Conference in Kansas City in June to present their winning project as an educational workshop.  To view the podcasts, visit www.myistorybook.com .

Justin Benz, Environmental Landscape Technology instructor at Hodgson, and   Nicole Dobbs, Business Technology instructor at Delcastle, have both been selected as Fellows for the 2009 Yale National Initiative to strengthen teaching in public schools.  Teachers selected for this competitive program will attend national seminars at Yale beginning in May and concluding in July.  This prestigious annual program brings together teachers from across the country to develop high quality curriculum units to be taught and shared with other teachers.  The first NCC Vo-Tech Yale Fellows were selected in 2004 and nine have been selected since then.

Hodgson and Delcastle each host 5K Run/Walk events in May.  Support the schools' efforts by joining in the exercise and fund raising.  Hodgson hosts its second annual 5K Run/Walk for Lung Cancer Awareness on Thursday, May 7, at 6:30 p.m. to benefit the American Cancer Society and families of former Hodgson teachers Letty Bowe and Aruna  Jalloh.  Delcastle's first 5K Run/Walk Cougar Classic will be held Thursday, May 21, at 6:30 p.m. to benefit the Delaware Foundation for Retarded Children/Blue-Gold organization.  Registration for both races is available online at Races2Run.com.