The winners' circle: the educators who received top honors at the ACTE Convention in Kansas City last December share a dedication to career and technical education and to their professional organizations.

2006 ACTE Teacher of the Year

Although he currently serves as the industrial education department chair at Peoria High School in Peoria, Arizona, Kevin English has taught nine different career and technical education curricula during his teaching career. As industrial department chair, he oversees programs that include automotive technology, drafting and design, building trades, welding and agricultural science. But English also is still a teacher, instructing the agricultural science and welding courses.

The sports turf management course English teaches as part of the agricultural science program is one of only a handful in the nation and the only one of its kind offered in a high school in Arizona.

During his own high school career, English received scholarship offers in both agriculture and culinary arts, but chose agriculture because it led to a bachelor's degree at a four-year university. One of the requirements, however, was that he would teach agriculture in Arizona for five years. It was a choice he clearly does not regret since he has now been teaching for 20 years.

"I found that I had an aptitude and a love for it, and that has just grown," English says.

In 1993, he took his school's traditional woodshop class and changed it into a building trades program. He also started the building trades' chapter of SkillsUSA at the school. He strongly supports career and technical student organizations and serves as an FFA adviser.

An administrator who works with him says of English's teaching and his work with the student organizations, "Under the tutelage of Kevin English, ordinary children become outstanding leaders every single day."

English has written and received grants that have benefited his school, including one for $100,000 that was used to expand the building trades program. He is also an active member of his professional associations, including ACTE, Arizona ACTE and the Arizona Association of Agricultural Teachers. He has served on two of ACTE's national committees, is a past president of Arizona ACTE and the current vice president elect for Region V.

"I have a firm belief that professional associations make a difference for teachers," says English. "The professional development we provide makes a difference in the classroom. I'm a much better teacher because I'm involved in my professional associations."

As for the profession itself, English says, "I love teaching. I love that in teaching every day is a different day, so I'm never bored"

While he recognizes that there are a lot of challenges facing teachers now--from financial struggles to high-stakes testing--English still wants to teach. As a career and technical educator, he feels that he is able to really get to know his students. He also is able to make a difference in his students' lives and gets to see that difference.

"It's fun at this point in my career that I have students who come back and say thanks for what I taught them, and that's the biggest payback of all," says English. "That's not worth trading for any amount of money."

2006 ACTE Outstanding Career and Technical Educator

Curtis "Ben" Helmandollar is the associate administrator for career and technical education for the Roanoke County School system and also served as the director of the Roanoke Area Tech Prep Consortium from 1991 until this year, when responsibility for tech prep in Virginia shifted to the state's community college system. But that doesn't mean Helmandollar only has one job now, because he is also teaching two remedial math classes at the middle school and serving as night principal for the local career and technical center, the Arnold R. Burton Technology Center.

So he is an administrator in the morning, then goes to the middle school to teach, then returns to administration, and finally serves as night principal at the career center.

Helmandollar says modestly of his multiple responsibilities, "After giving up the tech prep, there were some other little pieces that needed to be done, so I am doing those."

In the technology center, he supervises the special education program and special projects, and among those special projects is a new engineering center. Helmandollar was part of a county-wide effort that led to development of the engineering center, where students from five area high schools can now participate in a four-year pre-engineering program in which they learn about subjects such as machine technology and electronics.

"It's in the fourth year now," says Helmandollar, "so we have seniors graduating for the first time this year."

The pride in his students' achievement is evident in his voice, but one of his colleagues notes that Helmandollar "motivates his students and associates to perform at their highest potential."

Helmandollar, who has been a member of ACTE for more than 17 years, has served on the Region II Policy Committee and has made presentations at a number of state and national conferences. He was also an early champion of tech prep; he served on the national tech prep roundtable, and his consortium was one of the 15 national model sites for tech prep through CORD.

He is pleased by the fact that tech prep has been well supported and has continued to be very sustainable in terms of legislation and Perkins funding.

Before the National Tech Prep Conference became the event it is today, Helmandollar directed, sponsored and hosted a southeastern regional tech prep conference. Held in Roanoke, the conference included representatives from 12 states.

During his tenure in Roanoke, Helmandollar has raised more than $1.5 million in grant money for tech prep and other career and technical education programs in the area. With the 2006 Outstanding Career and Technical Educator award, ACTE has now recognized all of his accomplishments, but his hard work has not gone unnoticed by others.

His colleagues offer praise for his drive and dedication because, as one of them says of Helmandollar, "he always gives what it takes to get the job done."

2006 ACTE Outstanding New Career and Technical Teacher

Betsy Jensen is both a farmer and a teacher. She is responsible for crop marketing and recordkeeping at Jensen Farms, where she helps her husband and his father and mother. She also teaches farm business management and agricultural commodity marketing at Northland Community and Technical College in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. Jensen teaches high school graduates who are actively farming, and they range in age from their early 20s to her oldest student who is 70. Her curriculum is based on financial management, a skill that is critical to the success of farmers.

Colleagues have noticed that Jensen is a very creative teacher, and one of them notes that she "has a unique talent for presenting complex issues in a very understandable way, and for highlighting and reinforcing the key points she wants growers to learn."

Jensen has also been very active in marketing the program and has helped develop radio ads and brochures. She does speaking tours to promote farm management education across Minnesota, which she says she really enjoys, "because we have a lot of good instructors in the state."

Jensen does wish that more of those instructors were women, but she says that is something they are working on. Now that a second woman has joined her, she likes to point out that they have already doubled the number of women instructors in the state.

Jensen describes agriculture as "a pretty close-knit family," so she says, "We like to support one another."

That's why she is happy to have articles she writes appear in publications throughout the state, so that people will become more aware of the farm management programs and what they have to offer farmers.

Partnerships are very important, and Jensen works a lot with groups such as the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers and the Red River Valley Potato and Sugarbeet Growers Associations.

"They know we are a good resource for farmers," says Jensen, "so it's a great beneficial relationship."

Although 2005 was a bad year for farmers in Minnesota, and many of them lost substantial amounts of money, Jensen believes that the outlook for 2006 is a little rosier. She knows that what she is teaching them will help them in both bad times and good.

That's not to say that it's always easy. The first couple of years that a farmer is in the program can be challenging.

"The farmers' records may be in poor shape, and they often don't know how to interpret things in their records," Jensen explains, "but then in years two and three, everything starts to click together, and you begin to see the rewards of what you have been working on for two years."

So even though what she does is challenging, Jensen says that, "Once they have their 'Aha!' moment, it's very rewarding because they start to learn about how they can use their records to make better decisions and make more money on their farms."

And for Betsy Jensen, that is the true payoff.

2006 ACTE Outstanding Teacher in Community Service

As a teacher of family and consumer sciences and a Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) adviser at Youngsville Middle School in Youngsville, Louisiana, Dawn Gary has been working to make life better for her community.

Gary taught at the high school level for 15 years before coming to the middle school eight years ago.

When she began teaching at the middle school, Gary also opened up opportunities for her students to participate in a number of community service activities. These include planning and hosting workshops on muscular dystrophy, creating a Read Across America program, and raising money for Prevent Child Abuse America.

Gary is especially proud of her students' participation in Make a Difference Day, which resulted in an event called Fall Fest. For the event, her FCCLA students collaborated with other student organizations in bringing underprivileged children from local shelters and schools for a day of food, fun and games. A special effort was made to invite teenagers, because often they are overlooked as attention is focused on the younger children.

The event was more than just fun and games, however, since it included child abuse prevention and nutrition activities. Gary is very proud of the fact that her students did all of the planning, procured the prizes and conducted the event on their own.

Since the Make a Difference Day event, Gary notes that the students have done a lot of work with child abuse prevention.

"Every year the kids focus on something that they are interested in, and I don't hold them back," she says.

This year it was healthy living, students against destructive decisions, and homeless awareness. Youngsville is a rural area, so they don't have a large homeless population as in the urban areas, but Gary's students still wanted to focus on the issue. Then the hurricanes hit the state, and as she notes, "Ironically, we actually had more homeless."

Because of the magnitude of the disaster, Gary was worried that her students would not be able to collect as much as they hoped at Christmas time.

Instead, she says, "My students collected almost $400 in the homeroom coin wars, and then went on to collect for Christmas, at which time they collected about $500 in gift cards, supplies and cash. They also created an awareness that we do have a homeless problem."

In addition to the dedication she shows as a teacher, Gary has been very devoted to ACTE for more than 11 years, so she felt very honored by her award as the 2006 ACTE Outstanding Teacher in Community Service.

"This has been a wonderful experience," she says with emotion. "The opportunities have opened up to me."

But her thoughts immediately turn to her students, as she adds, "I am so proud of my students--the ones I have taught in the past and the ones I have now. I know that they continue to do community service, so that is important to me. It's really close to my heart."

Gary loves teaching family and consumer sciences because of the special relationships it allows her to foster with her students.

"It's almost on a daily basis that I'm teaching them some kind of life lesson," she says. That's what makes it so special and why I continue to do it."

Susan Reese is a Techniques contributing editor. She can be contacted at [e-mail].