"Life Skills Through Hands-On Education”

 Students learned independent living skills in a classroom designed like a real home — making beds, folding laundry, cooking meals, and handling everyday responsibilities. They also gained hands-on experience working at a local motel and stocking shelves at Goodson’s to help prepare them for real-world independence and opportunity. Programs like this showed how meaningful education can shape confidence, life skills, and future success beyond the classroom. 

Transcript

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We had to develop our own program where we taught the kids how to do independent living. And on teaching the kids independent living, that meant we had we had to develop us a classroom that looked just like a house. So we had to bring the kids from Kimball Elementary to the vocational school, in this classroom that looked like a house. We had to train the children how to do everything as in a house. How to make a bed, how to wash, how to fold, how to do some light cooking and everything. Wow. And we did that at the vocational school. Now, while at the vocational school, we collaborated with the um little motel that's out there beside of the vocational school to take our children there to have some direct learning. So they we would train them in the classroom, take them there to the Count Galoo motel, and they would work there for a small amount. And we worked with them and trained them how to change the beds and work the maid services at the hot at the motel. That was along with with independent living, the independent living skills, which really made a difference uh with the kids. We also collaborated with uh Goodsons. Okay. And the children went from goods from the school to Goodsons, and they would do some stocking in the in the uh uh in the store. Oh wow in the shelves. But for some reason or the other, it didn't it didn't carry over after we we f we left there. Yeah. And uh uh uh Do you think it was funding? Well, I don't know if it was funding or the the real direct line of collaboration. You needed to have some sort of relationship with those organizations to maintain that. They didn't maintain that relationship uh with those with those two uh businesses to maintain that. So that's what we did there at uh at at uh the McDowell County Vocational. Now the vocational school didn't have a lunch program. So that meant that for a short while the lunches were transported from Mount View to the vocational school. Oh boy. Well, then somebody started looking at it and found that the kids needed to be transported from the vocational school to Mount View for lunch. So we went from the vocational school to Mount View for lunch, which made no sense to us. So there again, the Board of Education got on board and started looking at some other ideas because as you would get new uh uh directors in these programs, they would always come up with other bright ideas. But what happened was they didn't incorporate their teachers with them to really get a full idea of what to do. They would just make the plans and let us know that this is what we were doing. And there again, that's what happened with me leaving the vocational school. We stayed down there, I'm thinking about eight years. Wow. We left there and we transferred to Mount View High School. Wow. When they transferred us to Mount View High School, they had they needed to be with that for c for to integrate the kids with the other classrooms. So we did that. There again, these are all unilaterally transfers that we got over the years, but we went along with it because we were taking the children with us. Yeah. Along with us. And while we were at the vocation school, I planned my own graduation where my kids would have a graduation just like everybody else. Yeah. And we did it there at the vocational school. We'd have a full graduation, we'd have a reception and all of that afterwards, but after a while that played out as well. Yeah. And then we stayed at Mount View High School until I retired. Wow. But we had a, we did there again, we had the independent living program, and and um the same program is still there at Mount View with the stove and the refrigerator and all of that stuff that goes along with it. And I don't know whether they're still going to keep it, but they need to.