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This article (http://goo.gl/mIpa2v) by Kim Underwood on the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School website highlights the positive effect Teachers@Work has already had on East Forsyth High teacher, Jennifer Schurman and her students.
Average teacher pay in North Carolina will be more than $50,000 for the first time in state history under North Carolina’s newest budget signed today by Governor Pat McCrory. The governor signed the $22.3 billion state budget today surrounded by teachers, local elected officials and legislators at Shiloh Elementary School in Union County. The budget makes key investments to strengthen education, provide tax relief for middle class families, make college more affordable and improve the health of our communities and bolster the state’s savings reserves.”

“KINSTON, N.C. (WNCT) – Some teachers in North Carolina are spending their summer working at local businesses.
It’s all part of a program called “Teachers at Work,” letting educators learn new skills to teach students how to become successful in the workforce.
When you think of a teacher, you picture them in a classroom helping students learn, but not this week.
Two Lenoir County teachers spent 5 days and more than 40 hours at Chef and The Farmer in Kinston. The well-known restaurant is featured in a popular PBS show called A Chef’s Life.

AT&T, in addition to being a valuable member for us here at NCBCE, are spearheading multiple programs that exemplify their commitment to education.
The first being their interactive website “Digital You”: http://digitalyou.att.com/. The website is designed to be a resource hub where users can access workshops and information on how to utilize technology based on their characteristics. Whether you are senior, person with disabilities, job seeker, etc. the website provides personalized and organized information on how you can best utilize technology to benefit you.
The “AT&T Aspire” program is another education initiative that AT&T is using to build a better future. One thing the program does is the Aspire Mentoring Academy. Recognizing that growing up without an adult mentor is a big issue for many students, AT&T decided to find these students without mentors and pair them up with AT&T employees who provide them with lessons on life skills and academic support.
To read more about the mentoring program and see what else AT&T Aspire has to offer follow this link: http://goo.gl/xZ53Qt

If there’s one thing that all graduating high school and college students can attest to hearing from their advisers on a daily basis, it’s probably something along the lines of: “you really need to look for an internship”. This should come to no surprise as having that work experience from an internship is vital for gaining a competitive advantage in the job market. Internships put students in an environment that is unlike anything they receive in the classroom. They learn real world skills that not only benefit themselves, but benefit the companies they work for who need a way to find reliable and skilled employees from the workforce pipeline that surrounds them.
At NCBCE, we saw the exceptional utility that internships provided to students so naturally, a question arose. If students need internships as a supplement to their classroom education, why not give teachers that same opportunity?
In his list of appointees for the NCWorks commission, Governor Pat McCrory included two NCBCE members: Korey Coon (Wake County) from Caterpillar and Melanie Chernoff (Durham County) from Red Hat, as well as our education partners Dr. Eric Hall from the Communities in Schools Program, Dr. June Atkinson, George Fouts, The Honorable John Skvarla, The Honorable Richard O. Brajer, and Dr. Hope Williams.
NCWorks is a lead agency in an “initiative geared toward achievement of major statewide workforce development goals”
See the full list of appointees and read more here: https://goo.gl/7ZbceS
A group of students from Pitt County schools spent this past academic year working and learning job skills at Vidant Health Care. These students, despite their disabilities, took advantage of this great opportunity and proved that they are great workers. As Lisa Lassiter, administrator of Vidant Health Careers and our NCBCE member, stated: “There’s a lot of roles they do 100 percent accurate every single time”
Follow this link to read more about the program and the students involved:

NCBCE Executive Director, Sue Breckenridge, as well as other leaders were featured in the latest edition of Business Insider magazine where they talked about the future of Students and Teachers in Education. Follow the link below to the PDF or pick up a copy of Business Insider to read the article.
Also, a special thanks to our Sponsors for the Annual Meeting: Google, Fidelity, Lenovo, CenturyLink, Biltmore, CastleBranch, Coastal Federal Credit Union, Business North Carolina, Mertek Solutions, Firestone, Duke Energy and CSUSA. Your partnership and support helped the annual meeting become successful!