Teaching Global Issues in American Schools

My Girlfriend's mother is a former educator that now works for a non-profit think tank in Atlanta working on the integration of technical education in High Schools, specifically taking the students that want vocational education and showing them the advantages of getting at least an Associate's degree in the field for the benefits of advancement. She recently sent me a nice book about the working with vocational students and helping push them into higher educational work and the challenges they face.

How do you get a student to go from wanting to be an auto mechanic to thinking that American history would be important for the rest of their lives? The answer was dealing with students individually and letting them explore their own niches in the subject, in this example, exploring the relationship between American and foreign automakers and the unique situations that helped the American car industry.

Here is a link to the authors blog as well as the book: http://blog.esrnational.org/bid/29183/Introducing-Getting-Classroom-Management-RIGHT