Time with Ruth Huff

The North Carolina Executive Director of NCACTE is Ruth Huff.  Ruth has been in education for many years.  She started out in education as a Health Occupations teacher in a rural North Carolina school district.

Ruth and I have been in the process of discussing the creation of a North Carolina Leadership Fellows program throughout my time as an ACTE Fellow.  With our state dealing with the matter of unification this year, that has been put on hold.  Each time I see Ruth, we spend time discussing how to proceed on our end.  At our State Leadership meeting in the fall of this year, Ruth and I sat down and had some time to discuss this initiative again.  We began brainstorming ways to begin this process and what all it should entail.  At this point, we are relying on ACTE to assist us with the state leadership fellow program.

Ruth, along with our new state president, Rodney, are working this year with the theme “Together as One”.  This theme works towards the idea that our professional organization and our state staff with the Department of Public Instruction will work more closely together for the benefit of all Career and Technical Education students and staff.  Often times in the past, there has been a feeling of an “us against them” mentality and we are working diligently to end that notion.  As Ruth continues her work to not only unify with ACTE, she told me that she is working to make sure that all CTE educators in the state feel unified together for a common goal.  Ruth is always open to attending professional development workshops to discuss what ACTE can do for educators.

NCACTE hired Ruth several years ago as the Executive Director.  Ruth is paid based on a 20-hour work week.  It is well known that Ruth spends way more than 20 hours of effort and work towards the NCACTE.  What has most impressed me recently about Ruth is that following our Fall PD and Leadership Conference, she was volunteering her time to be camp nurse for the Trade and Industrial Division teachers and students for a leadership retreat.  North Carolina is truly fortunate to have Ruth as our Executive Director.