I have had the pleasure of knowing and working with Eric Jones for the past 4 years.   He completed Digital Communications, Computer Applications 1, Computer Applications 2, he’s been my T.A., Accounting 1, and he is currently taking Accounting 2. 

Eric is a very competitive, self-motivated young man.

Business and Marketing is not the field of study that he plans to pursue in college (he will be heading off to Gonzaga soon), yet he has challenged himself to excel in all of these courses—He has expected/received nothing less than A’s . 

Upon Completion of Accounting 2, I will have been able to grant him 20 college credits!

It’s my pleasure once again this year to name Dennis Vakulchik as the Career and Technical Education Student of the Year for Carpentry 2009.  Dennis was also presented with this same honor last year. 

It’s really been a pleasure to have Dennis in the Carpentry Program for these last two years.  Dennis has been a model student and a major contributor in the classroom and out on the home site.  He is a class leader who leads by example and has earned the respect of his fellow students by working hard and accepting any task that was assigned to him with determination.  His strong work ethics and high grades in Carpentry have earned him multiple honors.  He’s been recognized as Carpentry Class Student of the Month for November in 2007 last school year and twice this school year, back in October and again this last March.  Dennis has also been honored by the Alderwood Rotary Foundation as their Student of the Month for February last school year and again this school year in January.  Also this last January Dennis was chosen as one of two students that went to Olympia and represented the Edmonds Carpentry Program and Running Start for the Trades to the State Education Committee. 

Whether it’s in the classroom or on the jobsite, Dennis is there prepared and on time with a positive attitude and the appropriate tools to accomplish the job. 

After High School Dennis plans on attending a 4 year college and then taking over his dad’s siding business, which actually may happen much sooner than he originally thought.  I know Dennis will be successful in whatever he plans to do. 

Congratulations Dennis!

It is a pleasure for me to present Amanda Cook with this CTE Leadership and Achievement award.  Amanda has been a student in the Vocational Architectural Drafting program at Edmonds-Woodway High School for the past two years.  She is a highly respectable, conscientious individual who values academic achievement and success in her chosen profession.

As a student, Amanda has achieved success in representing her school, community, and herself through involvement in academic and extra-curricular activities.  In addition to being a National Honor Society member, she is a member of the Vocational Architecture Club and participated and placed 4th in the NW Regional Architectural drafting competition.  She competed in the State and placed 13th.

In the classroom, Amanda has made it apparent that she will someday achieve her goal of becoming an architect.  This is evident in the continuous high quality of exemplary work that she produces.  She is extremely talented and solves problems in a creative and logical manner.  Amanda has also sought experiences outside the classroom in the form of her involvement in Art and Photography clubs, including winning awards and scholarships for her artwork from the Edmonds Art Festival.

Amanda plans to pursue a degree in graphic arts and/or architecture.  Congratulations, Amanda!

Lynnwood High School, along with the Family and Consumer Sciences department, are proud to present the 2008-2009 FACSE CTE Leadership Award to Doan-Trang Kha, a 4.0 GPA senior at LHS and wonderful representative of the Interior Design and Senior Experience classes she was involved in.  Her plans are to attend Shoreline Community College to obtain her AA degree.  She will determine whether she will pursue a career in Interior Design or in Dentistry in the near future. 

In addition to taking Family and Consumer Sciences courses, she has also taken an Entrepreneurship class from our Business and Marketing department and has worked in a Retail store part-time earning Work Experience credit as well.  Her Senior Project was an in-depth project that focused on designing and creating a scale model of an interior of a home accompanied by an in-depth career search on Interior Design.

Doan-Trang moved to the United States almost 3 years ago with her parents and two older sisters who both attend Edmonds Community College.  Since then, she has excelled in her English Language Learning classes and has overall been a bright, intelligent, source of joy to her teachers.

We are excited to see where Doan-Trang will successfully shine her light to others beyond LHS! 

I have had the pleasure of having Sarah Schumacher as a student in the Mountlake Terrace High School Family and Consumer Science program for the past two years.  She has taken six of the courses in our department and has been an amazing model of academic excellence and intellectual curiosity.

Sarah works extremely hard, demanding excellence of herself in all assignments and projects.  I am especially impressed with the maturity of Sarah’s thinking.  She readily questions, collects and analyzes data and then forms rational conclusions and insightful inferences. Sarah has the critical abilities to set goals, evaluate her own performance and follow a task through to successful completion. She is a perfect example of the work-ready skills that we desire all our students to have. 

Throughout the time I have known Sarah, she has demonstrated personal responsibility and integrity.  While battling a medical issue that results in several absences a month, Sarah is diligent in her email correspondence and continues to turn-in high quality work upon her return. In the midst of a seeming epidemic of student apathy, Sarah is continually seeking to improve herself and to develop skills for the future.  She has taken and excelled in almost every course that we offer and is using these experiences to find the career that she is best suited for.  In all things, Sarah is humble, respectful and respected by others.

I appreciate Sarah’s high level of integrity; work ethic and dedication to learning.  It is with great pleasure that I recommended Sarah Schumacher as a recipient of the CTE Leadership and Achievement Award.

I have had the pleasure of having Crizelyn Cabarubias as a student in the Healthcare Professions class since September, 2008.  Crizelyn demonstrates a high level of maturity and interest in the healthcare field.  She is a serious and dependable student.   

Crizelyn has never failed to take her course work seriously and integrate new words and knowledge of healthcare into her existing frameworks of understanding. She has never failed to submit thoughtful and first-rate work. Throughout the entire year Crizelyn has maintained a top grade and excelled in all her hands on practice.

The last 10 weeks Crizelyn has been taking care of people in many stages of illness and recovery at Stevens Hospital and Aldercrest Rehab Center. She has displayed extreme grace and compassion as she cared for the individuals she worked with. It has not been uncommon to see Crizelyn taking the extra time to make sure a patient was completely fed or safely tucked back into bed with a smile on her face and complete trust of the patient. The medical staff working with Crizelyn, have nothing but high praise, and look forward to seeing her pursue a career in the industry.

This young lady has a very bright future in the healthcare industry. It is my pleasure to grant this honor to a wonderful young woman for leadership and academic achievement in Healthcare Professions.

It is my pleasure to award Leeban Ahmed, Anna Schnell, Eugene Hiles, and Joanna Scott this year’s CTE Leadership and Achievement Award for the Information Technology Program. 

As part of my Advanced Web Page Authoring class, these students worked together to completely overhaul the Edmonds-Woodway High School web site.  To accomplish this monumental task, they utilized their different strengths and abilities in web technology and design to create a fabulous team.  As a team they worked with the Edmonds-Woodway administration and staff to come up with the design, layout and content of the site.  To build the site they used an open source content management system called Joomla.  Their motivation, curiosity, passion, and intelligence helped them get through the challenges faced to create a professional and high quality web site.  You should go online and check it out. 

Since most of my award winners are graduating next week, I do not think they have time to do any web page work, but I would hire them if they did. 

I have truly enjoyed working with these students for at least the last two years. Leeban, Eugene, Anna, and Joanna, as always, great job and I wish you good luck. Congratulations!

The CTE Leadership and Achievement Award in Law and Justice this year goes to Caleb Post.

Caleb has been a student in my Law and Justice class at Meadowdale High since September of 2008.  From the start of the year, he has consistently demonstrated leadership, humor, intellectual curiosity, and creativity in my class.  Caleb has often served as a de-facto teaching assistant; he is always there to help me with copies, materials, or arranging projects, fieldtrips, and other activities.  He is the person who volunteers when I need help.  He is able to lead discussions on controversial subjects such as the death penalty – indeed has commandeered my class a few times!!  

The thing I like most about Caleb however, is not that he is a “ Straight A” student, and certainly not that he always agrees with me, or does things as I think they should be done.  What I admire most, is that Caleb is irrepressibly, unapologetically himself.  All any of us can hope to be, is the best possible version of ourselves, and that takes a lot of time, courage and hard work.  But Caleb has already done a lot of that work -- he is kind, ethical, curious, affectionate, intelligent, high-energy, humorous, and very responsible.  He enjoys his life, he is kind to others, and he takes ownership of his own life.  He does not bend to peer pressure.  His intellectual abilities will take him as far as he wishes to go, as a professional – whether that is a police officer or a Senator -- and his heart and spirit will carry him equally far, in serving his loved ones and his community. So, what more could we ask for?

Without reservation, I recommend Caleb for the CTE Leadership and Achievement Award in Law and Justice.

A willingness to serve, and a positive attitude, really make all the difference in the world.  Four years ago, as a freshman, I met an energetic young woman with these characteristics by the name of Maria Colt.  This last year Maria took over the single most important position I can offer a student and that is being our Store Manager.  In previous years, we have had three managers run our store, this year I selected Maria as our sole manager.

Maria has been an incredible manager. In addition to abiding by the district’s food policy, she has managed two sets of 27 employees.  Maria has mastered a computerized ordering process used by our largest vender FSA.  On a daily basis she works with all of our vendors keeping them apprised of our store needs and operations.  Maria prepares a weekly staffing document to ensure the store is adequately staffed and then works with the needs of the employees to make sure they are able to fulfill their commitments.  She also prepares monthly financial statements.  On top of this, did I mention she supervises the employees during their shifts?

Her feats as a manager alone have made her indispensable to our operations this year, but there is more.  For her senior project, Maria coordinated the 33rd Dayton National Corporation mock interviews. 

In this program, Maria contacted numerous business people asking if they would volunteer to interview beginning marketing students.  She arranged to have 18 business people come in on our interview day, provided them lunch, and an overview of the project, their role, and coordinated over 112 interviews in 60 minutes.

Yes, Maria is amazing!  And it is a privilege for me to present her the CTE LEADERSHIP and ACHIEVEMENT award for the Student Store from Lynnwood High School.

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I truly believe this young woman can do anything.  As our Production Manager for our news show, Kristy was on top of all the many pieces that make up a News Broadcast from the stories chosen, scripts, production deadlines, talent support, to the editing and planning.  

When I was gone for two weeks due to a family death, the news class produced two shows.  I know it was an amazing teamwork effort by all the students, but Kristy was the glue that kept it all together.

Not only is Kristy an excellent on air talent/anchor but she always is there to support the other up and coming talent with humbleness, kindness, and major support.  She puts the needs of the news show over her own needs.  She sparkles with enthusiasm and it is contagious. She nurtures the shy ones and encourages the reluctant producers.  Her modesty combined with her remarkable talent is an unbeatable duo. I hope her path continues to broadcast journalism, she is born to it.

Kristi also organized our first ever MDHS Film Festival, and did a truly remarkable job.  She showcased over 40 films and created a program that included screen shots of the films and director comments.  Kristy pulled off what many committees of adults have great difficulty with, a successful, organized and powerful event celebrating what her fellow filmmakers had created.  

Kristy has most definitely left a legacy at MDHS that will continue to make a difference in our school. She will be greatly missed.

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Kyle Brossoit is a senior at Edmonds Woodway High School. Focus, thoughtfulness, and intellect have made him a successful student in all academic areas. He is a member of the Deaf Academic Bowl team, an RIT Merit Scholar, and a Presidential Scholar Award recipient. He also helps run the EW Photo Club as Vice President.

After a successful first semester in Beginning Photography, Kyle found that he could not fit photography into his schedule the following year. Instead of letting go, he remained dedicated to shooting film and printing in the darkroom during his free time. This year, Kyle enrolled in Advanced Photography. He has a natural eye for composition and a talent to create interesting photographs. His strengths extend beyond the darkroom into the realm of digital photography, and his dedication to this medium has turned him into a talented artist and photographer. This year Kyle was recently accepted into the Edmonds Art Festival, and received an honorable mention for one of his photomontages. Kyle’s creativity, hard work, and thoughtfulness will continue to help him as he pursues photography, and throughout his educational experiences. Kyle’s dedication to photography has made him a true example of what an amazing student can achieve, and this is why I’d like to present him with the Achievement and Leadership award this year.

I am proud to introduce the 3rd and 4th year students of the Edmonds Woodway sports medicine program.  They are (pictured) Cailin Fellows, Elizabeth Gradwohl, and Shelby Smith; (not pictured) Alex Storino and Sabrina Vessey.  They, as a group of students, have been instrumental in bringing the program to where it is today.

For three years these students have been leaders in and outside of the classroom.  They have spent endless hours (each over 500 hours easily) on the sidelines of football games and other events.  They worked through rain, snow, sleet and the sunshine.  If you were to ask any athlete at Edmonds Woodway who can take care of them, all of them would mention at least 2 of the girls.  The athletes look up to them as caring people and ones who support them, coaches depend on them and I especially look to them when I need assistance with athletes or games. 

The girls have set a standard in the EW sports medicine program.  The beginning students have all told me that when they become advanced students they want to be as good as, and similar to the five of these girls.  They have the respect from teachers, coaches and student athletes that people would give professionals in the business.  They are very dedicated and very passionate about sports medicine.  They are always willing to help out when needed, and always look to perform better.  

These students have helped build this program in the past three years.  When they entered the class, we barely had enough students to run a class.  With their leadership and love for sports medicine, they have made students aware of the class, the program, and have been instrumental in getting students to enroll in the class.  They did this by their dedication and their passion for on/off the field care to the athletes and the sports medicine profession. 

I will miss these girls tremendously over the next few years, but I hope they know they are always welcome back to help out.  They need to know that the Sports Medicine program at Edmonds Woodway is more their program than mine, and I am grateful for all the time and energy they have spent in the athletic training room.