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Show Vocational Guidance Ss Conference Theme How can the secondary schools of Alpine School District do more effective work in vocational guidance? guid-ance? This was the theme of a vocational conference held recently at Pleasant Grove High School for representatives of Alpine District and members of the four high schools of the district. The meeting was conducted by B. M. Jolley, Director of Pupil Personnel for Alpine District. The theme was discussed by a panel, composed of Mark Nicholes, Director of Vocational Education for the State Department of Education, Edu-cation, who acted as chairman; Dr. Lloyd Witlock, Director of Pupil Personel, Prcvo District; W. W. Sorenson, Director of Central Utah Vocational School; Raymond Richans, U. S. Employment Service Ser-vice Representative; Winston Crawford, Representative of Geneva Gen-eva Steel Company, and Dan Peterson, Pet-erson, Principal of Lehi High School. Mr. Nicholes pointed out that vocational guidance in the secondary second-ary schools has greatly increased in the last ten years. A greater wealth of source material is available avail-able for student use, more teacher time has been made available for counseling, and progress is being made in the testing program. However, there is still room for much improvement. Dr. Whitlock added that the schools are morally their vocations. "Next to choosing a mate, selecing a vocation is the most important decision in one's life," he said. It was the opinion of the panel members that the high school should assist students to explore teh field of vocations, but not act-ualy act-ualy prepare them for that vocation, voca-tion, except in isoluated instances sue has the commercial field. Preparation Pre-paration for trades and professions is considered post-graduate courses. Good vocational counseling requires re-quires the closest cooperation between be-tween counselor, student, teacher and parents, especialy since it was felt that in many cases, the student stu-dent was too immature to decide exactly the vocation he would select sel-ect for later life. Parents, too, were taken to task for imposing their vocational interests on their children. Teachers in high schools were also urged to offer a more vocational approach to subject matter. In the matter of training for trades ,refrerence was made to the fine work of the Central Utah Vocational-School. However, Mr. Sorenson, Sor-enson, Director of the School, pointed out that the number of students that can be registered, as well as classes made available, is determined by the funds available, to the school, and that these are limited at the present time. Departmental meetings were the concluding part of the conference. In each department, discussion centered around the classroom teacher, and his part in vocational counseling. The main conclusion reached, was that each teacher has opportunities oppor-tunities to counsel students vocationally. vocat-ionally. The extent, however, depends de-pends upon the classroom load of the teacher, upon his willingness to examine the cumulative records, and upon his willingness to cooperate co-operate with the counseling staff of the high school and parents of each student. |