High Point Teacher of the Year Mark Wallace
By Viktoria-Leigh Wagner
SUSSEX — Technology education teacher Mark Wallace of Wantage was honored as the district’s Teacher of the Year on March 26. Wallace teaches grades 9-12 and with 14 years at High Point he said, “It’s an honor.”
Hands-on learner
“Mr. Heimbach, my seventh-grade shop teacher, introduced me to the first course where I actually learned by doing, which helped me to understand my own unique learning style. I told him I wanted to be a teacher like him when I grew up.”
Wallace has been an educator for 33 years. With a master’s degree in administration supervision and a bachelor's of science degree in industrial arts education, Wallace also taught technology education at Lounsberry Hollow Middle School in Vernon from 1980 to 1999.
Wallace currently teaches engineering and design, communication technology and women in engineering at High Point — all courses he designed himself. “When I taught Middle School, I noticed the women were always pushed to computers to do writing and boys went to building when they were working in teams, so I developed a system where genders would alternate roles and the students could experience all parts of problem solving and design.”
According to Wallace, there is a shortage of engineers. “Only 7 percent of high school graduates go into engineering, and there are very few females. ”High Point’s women in engineering, design and technology is the nation’s first course of its kind and has been taught at the school for 11 years," said Wallace. “I worked with 20 female students and 50 female engineers from around the world who helped me design the course."
Wallace said the design phase of the course took two years. "This program has proved highly successful," he said, "60 percent of the students continue on to higher level [science, technology, engineering and math] courses in our school.”
As High Point’s Technology Student Association (TSA) Advisor from 1999-2002, Wallace said, “My engineering and design class started out in 1999-2000 with eight kids — now I have four sections a semester with 160 students per year in Technology 1.”
Wallace has been an active member of the New Jersey Technology Engineering Education Association since 1983 and was a past president of the organization. He was also its executive director from 1991-1999, where he helped bring FIRST Robotics to New Jersey and “maintained and managed the policies and procedures of a 700-member professional association.”
“My current involvement includes education committees at the Roebling Mill Museum and the Sterling Hill Mining Museum, which allows me to incorporate the goals and standards of integrated STEM to the general public. There is no better way to serve the community than to promote, actively, how critical it is to understand the technological world around us," said Wallace.
Wallace was selected as an ITEEA Distinguished Technology Educator, recognized within the top 5 percent nationally in the technology teaching profession. He was also recognized as a Distinguished N.J. Technology Educator of the Technology Education Association of N.J.
A step ahead
“Providing students with experiences with ingenuity, innovation and entrepreneurism in learning is what I take pride in contributing to my students as a teacher,” said Wallace.
Before he began teaching high school level engineering, Wallace was teaching an eight step technological method for designing projects in class. In two months, he created the new 11-step loop, which Wallace said hangs in every technology education lab at High Point.
“Rapid societal changes have increased the demand for internationally competitive workers and for an educational system designed to meet that demand,” said Wallace. “To compete in this global, information-based economy, students must be able to identify and solve real problems, reason effectively and apply critical thinking skills. Verbal communication and public speaking are also important skills for every job.”
High Point voices
“Mark challenges his students to be active players in their own education, establishing an atmosphere where the students are the centerpiece of the learning," said technological studies teacher Brian Drelick.
“Mark is an educator who facilitates the learning in his classroom,” said High Point’s Principal Thomas Costello. “He is very open to talking about his teaching techniques and how he may learn from others who teach the same concept. He is not afraid to change and try a new teaching technique when he believes it will benefit his students.”