Vicki Poole  

Vicki Poole, former director of the Office of School to Work at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, discusses the importance of the applied and integrated curriculum in preparing students for both work and life. Excerpted from the Rural Audio Journal (Vol. 2, No. 3), From School to Work--and Back Again: Apprenticeships for Rural Students (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1994).

"Part of what school to work is also a relook at our curriculum in our schools, and we're trying to make sure that in our schools, we're doing more integrated and applied curriculum that is more like the world that students are going to be entering for helping students learn that the kinds of material they learn in school is needed for both life and work, so the more you can apply it to something that has meaning for kids, the more enthused they get and the better they learn quite frankly."

This Critical Issue was written by Kathleen Paris, former director of the Leadership Institute for School-to-Work Transition, Center on Education and Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Lynne Huske, Pathways coordinator at North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

Date posted: 1998