Ashe claims construction trades’ top teacher

By Jerry Sena

Ashe County High School teacher Steve Scott expects a lot from his students. Last week he showed his students he not only talks the talk, he does a pretty good job of walking the walk.
Scott received top honors from the North Carolina Home Builders Association as the state’s construction trades teacher of the year.

“I have high expectations for my students,” Scott said Friday, when school administrators and local

representatives of the Home Builders Association presented him with a certificate commemorating the award.
The 13-year Ashe County Schools veteran said he brings an open mind to the classroom and believes that the subject matter carries value well beyond the school walls.

“I think every student can learn at different levels,” he said. “Everything we teach in here will be valuable at some point in their lives. No matter their handicap or limitations, they can succeed when your expectations are high. If you have high expectations, then you get more out of the kids.”

Ashe County Home Builders Association president Mike Shatley was beaming as he handed Scott the award.

“We are especially proud of Steve. This is a special honor for him to be recognized from amongst all his peers in the state of North Carolina. We are glad that he is training the next generation of construction leaders,” he said.

Scott said Ashe’s program may have caught the attention of the state organization because of the wide range of community projects it takes on, and the school’s insistence that the students be exposed to “real world” demands from the very beginning.

He said letting students know of the standards they’ll be expected to meet in the work-a-day world is essential to preparing for life beyond the program.
“We don’t baby them here,” he said. “We try to treat them the same way they’ll be treated in the world of work.”

Scott’s students, and those of other teachers in the career and technical education department, have applied their developing skills to quite a number of “live projects” around the ACHS campus and in the community.
“Just about everything you see around the campus that wasn’t part of the original construction was done by our students,” Scott said. “Even in these days of staying in the classroom and getting test scores up, the school district has given us the opportunity to do a lot of hands-on projects.”
The projects not only dot the campus – from constructing space for agriculture classes and dugouts for the baseball field – but extend into the community with a wheelchair ramp for an injured student and panels for the Ashe County Arts Council’s Barn Quilt project.

Scott brushed off his nomination as mere chronology.
“I’m the senior member,” he said. “I’ve been here longer than anyone else. We have a lot of good teachers here, but they’re young teachers.”

Scott began his Ashe County career at the now closed Ashe Central High School. His 24 years as an educator began in Polke County, followed by stays in Fayetteville, Thomasville, and Asheboro, before eventually landing him in Ashe.

His teaching experience has spanned the curriculum from biology to algebra, to instruction in drafting, woodworking and construction architecture. He said his favorite is basic level drafting.
Joallen Lowder, the school’s director of career and technical education said she’s proud of Scott’s accomplishment, but expanded her praise to the entire department.

“We have some of the best construction trades teachers in the state,” she said Friday. “Not just in test scores, but in live projects. They have very high expectations of their students.”
There’s that word again: expectations.

Student Wes Woodward said those expectations helped awaken a passion not even he knew lay dormant in him.

“I didn’t really have an interest in building before I took this class from Mr. Scott,” Woodward said.
And, though he was certain Scott had helped open his eyes to the possibilities of a career in the building trades, Woodward was less sure how it had happened.

“It’s just the way he handles his class,” he said. “It’s just how he teaches.”