NJ teachers turn career experience into student success (NJBIZ)

Joseph Latigona entered law enforcement after serving in the U.S. Army, certain that he was pursuing a lifelong calling. It turned out that becoming a police officer opened the door for him to find his true purpose and passion as a high school career and technical education teacher.

While assigned as the School Resource Officer at Burlington County Institute of Technology, Latigona began spending time in the classrooms, delivering important lessons to students on a range of topics from the dangers of smoking and vaping to motor vehicle laws. He also served as a guest speaker in history classes to discuss case law.

“I realized that being in the school was the highlight of police work for me,” Latigona said.

Administrators recognized Latigona’s knack for teaching and made him an offer to start a law and public safety program at BCIT.

Over the past 15 years, Latigona has helped mold the program to support students’ varied college and career ambitions, adding elements to introduce a range of careers, including as first responders, lawyers, judges and forensic scientists.

The evolution led to the program’s name change from law and public safety to criminal justice, better reflecting the vision Latigona has for the program.

“I really enjoy having students enter the program thinking they are on one path, and then they start to think bigger and better things are possible for the future,” Latigona said.

Latigona shares lessons from his own on-the-job experiences and engages his professional network to help students explore careers and prepare for their next steps. He calls upon his contacts to provide workplace tours and aid with hands-on learning. One example, he invites experts on the Community Emergency Response Team to provide students with emergency response and disaster training. Students work toward their CPR/AED certification and become prepared to join CERT.

As a member of the Advisory Board with Rowan College at Burlington County, he has leveraged this relationship to incorporate dual credit courses into his criminal justice curriculum, providing the opportunity for students to earn 18 college credits as they complete their high school program.

Latigona’s own career journey makes him especially relatable to students. The connections he makes and motivation he provides contributed to his recognition this year as Burlington County’s Teacher of the Year.

“When I first accepted this position, I saw it as a job,” Latigona said.

But another public recognition, well before his Teacher of the Year honor, changed Latigona’s outlook. After being nominated as a mentor for a student’s National Honor Society induction ceremony, he heard directly from that student the impact he had on him as a teacher.

“I saw my role through the perspective of the student, and I understood the influence I had in that role; it changed teaching for me,” he explained.

Hudson County

Another career and technical education teacher, Shelly Witham, also earned recognition as County Teacher of the Year. Witham, who leads the Academy of Environmental Science at High Tech High School, is the Hudson County honoree.

Much like Latigona, she dipped her toe into teaching and quickly realized she enjoyed it.

At the time, she was pursuing a master’s degree in geology education at Purdue University after earning a bachelor’s degree in solid earth geology. A professor asked her to help teach geology to elementary education undergraduates.

That experience motivated her to pursue teaching as a career. When she joined Hudson County Schools of Technology in 2001, she found an ideal opportunity to teach in a setting that encourages her to bring her field experience into the classroom and dive deep into the subjects she has spent years studying herself.

“The nice thing about being in career and technical education is that I am teaching to support students in their pursuit of a profession; I am showing them the practice of being a scientist, being a teacher, being an environmentalist,” she explained.

Witham helped develop the Environmental Science Academy and forged a dual enrollment agreement with Hudson County Community College, which enables students to earn enough college credits to obtain an associate degree in environmental studies before they graduate high school.

“There is so much I like about teaching here; I get to make science more accessible, and I especially like giving the young females in the classroom the confidence to pursue and succeed in science,” Witham said. “I was almost always the only female geologist in the room, and I share that with my students and help them realize they are intelligent and should have a place and a voice in whatever career they choose.”

Witham said she is fortunate to teach in a program that students enter after already identifying an interest in the subject matter. Similar to Latigona, she understands the responsibility to expose students to the many career opportunities tied to that interest.

“I love bringing in professionals to talk with students about their careers, and I also like taking students out into the community to learn more and see professionals at work,” Witham said. “I take the urban ecology class to the High Line to learn about urban design; I take other groups of students to the North Hudson Sewerage Authority to explore the many careers responsible for wastewater treatment and flood mitigation in urban environments. With each trip, tour and guest speaker, I encourage my students to find their niche.”

Both Latigona and Witham have certainly found their own niche as career and technical education teachers. The evidence is not only in their County Teacher of the Year honors, but the countless students they have helped discover their own unique career paths and purpose.