Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

Teachers@Work Working In Lenoir County

Home / NCEast Alliance / Teachers@Work Working In Lenoir County
Teachers@Work Working In Lenoir County

Two Woodington Middle School teachers will get hands-on training this summer that will help them – and by extension, their students – better relate to the skills young people need to acquire and be successful in jobs with local business and industry.

Two Woodington Middle School teachers will get hands-on training this summer that will help them – and by extension, their students – better relate to the skills young people need to acquire and be successful in jobs with local business and industry.

Sarah Neider, Woodington’s STEM Center facilitator, and science teacher Tiera Jones will work a week next month and Chef and the Farmer restaurant. To prepare, they sat down on Monday for PSHA training and an introduction to Lean Six SIgma, a lean manufacturing process that stresses teamwork and efficiency. 

They are tow of 51 middle and high school teachers selected for the Teachers@Work program, a joint initiative of the North Carolina Business Committee for Education (NCBCE), the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, STEM East and the N.C. Community College System. The program is funded by grants from Biogen, GSK, State Farm, and the Golden Leaf Foundation. 

“That are connecting businesses and schools in our community to teach teachers hard and soft skills within that business that we will be able to take back to our schools and teach.” Neider said.

Hard skills are those usually associated with learning in school, such as math and writing. Soft skills could also be called social or interactive skills – business etiquette or the ability to talk to people and work well in groups for instance.

Neider expects to spend time in several different areas of Chef and the Farmer’s business environment because the variety mirrors her classroom, where teams of students rotate through a series of introductions to 14 different STEM-related vocations during a semester.

Jones, however, wants to spend most of her time in the restaurant’s kitchen. “The cooking aspect relates a lot to the sixth-grade science curriculum, ” she said. Convection, conduction, radiation, the pot touching the burner, feeling the heat from the burner – those kinds of things relate.”

At the end of their time at the restaurant, to run from July 11-15, Neider and Jones will each create a lesson plan that showcases both hard and soft skills needed by future employees that are specific to the business.