Summer jobs give teachers different focuses for education

Aug. 31--Summer jobs are not unusual for teachers, but DeAnna Foust-Platt, English and language arts teacher at Ray Street Academy, did something new this summer.

Foust-Platt spent two weeks at the Nicole Cockerham's State Farm Insurance office on St. Mark's Church Road aiming to bring back a lesson on job skills for her students. Foust-Platt did not get into the confidential information the insurance office handles, but worked on the agency's marketing and advertising, and helped people get settled in when they came into the office.

"They just let me jump in there and start doing work," Foust-Platt said.

Foust-Platt was one of eight teachers across the state in a pilot project called Teachers@Work. The N.C. Business Committee for Education, a nonprofit organization working out of the governor's office, put the project together with the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. The idea is for teachers to learn job skills outside their field to take back to their students.

Foust-Platt said she got to see how the women in the office handled people in difficult times after accidents. She said she admired how well they worked with people and how thorough they were in their work. It is something she would like to get across to her students -- the importance of both people skills and business skills.

"One thing (my students) need to work on is their hard and soft skills," Foust-Platt said. "Hard skills -- knowing the content; soft skills -- having compassion for people."

Last year's Alamance-Burlington School System teacher of the year, Foust-Platt has been teaching at Ray Street Academy, the district's alternative school, for four years.

Like a lot of career teachers, Foust-Platt went into teaching right out of college and has been doing it for 16 years. While she majored in broadcast journalism and interned at a TV station when she was in college, most of her work experience has been in education.

"Other than that I haven't really done work like that before," she said. "I started at 22, and I've been teaching ever since."

She said the environment and the work were different, but the expectations for quality were similar to what she knows in public schools.

"I think there were more similarities than differences," she said.

Part of the program is for the teachers involved to write lesson plans based on their experiences. She said her focus would be on students building those hard and soft skills, homing in on their own talents and finding careers that contribute something.

"What can you do to help the world in what you do?" Foust-Platt said. "That's what you're trying to build, great students and great people."

Part of what she does is get her students to look at their interests and strengths so they are thinking about what their best career options are while they are still in middle school.

"It's a great segue to talk to kids about how to talk to people," she said, "and how to market what you're working on."

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