Diana Porter  

Diana Porter, program facilitator of the High School for the Teaching Professions, at the Hughes Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, describes how this occupational high school integrates a college-prep curriculum with practical workplace experience in schools to prepare students for careers in education. Excerpted from a videotaped interview with Diana Porter (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1998).

"The high schools of a teaching profession is a four year college preparatory curriculum, because we believe the best education for the best is the best education for all, so every student coming into our school, non-track environment, every student takes four years of English, four years of Math, four years of Science, four years of Social Studies, and at least two years of Foreign Language. On top of that we have a programmed specific class everyday, in which we bring up issues around education because the mission of our school is to encourage and support urban children to consider careers in education. We see ourselves as preparing for a broad career pathway, from instructor assistant, which can possibly be done right out of high school, although fifty percent of our instructor assistants have at least two years of college, daycare workers, and we are now starting a two year vocational program for junior and seniors as a partnership with the University of Cincinnati to prepare young people for the CDA, the Child Development Associate degree, so they will still take a college preparatory curriculum and go two to three periods a day their junior and senior year and work in the University Day Car center and take the CDA curriculum."

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