Union County Vocational-Technical Schools students at HOPES CAP Inc., which provides early childhood education for low-income children in Plainfield.
Union County Vocational-Technical Schools honored HOPES CAP Inc. as its 2020 Business Partner of the Year.
The award is given annually to a county vocational technical school business partner for outstanding contributions to career and technical education. Business partners play a variety of roles, including serving on county vocational technical school program advisory boards, offering opportunities for students to gain valuable work experience, donating equipment, or serving as mentors and role models for students.
HOPES CAP focuses on early childhood education for low-income children in Plainfield between the ages of 3-5. The organization offers a preschool program that adopts the immersion method of acquiring language skills by having both English- and Spanish-focused days for both the teachers and the students.
Students from Union County Vocational Technical High School’s Teacher Education Academy student organization, Educators Rising, organize donation drives each year depending upon the needs of the organization.
“Our work focuses on service learning and allows our students to earn service hours each year as part of our collaboration with this organization,” said Superintendent Gwen Ryan.
This year, students worked to donate hand sanitizer and masks as well as enlisting the help of a volunteer to hand sew 30 dozen children’s masks for the group made from slightly used bed sheets.
The faculty at HOPES CAP, Inc. also work directly with our Teacher Education students to create differentiated learning lessons for the preschoolers that our students take the lead on instructing.
“We are so thankful for this partnership as it is the culmination of our academy’s efforts on curriculum, service learning, ethics, first person language and modeling professionalism,” Ryan said.
