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I recently interviewed Simon Hauger, a math teacher at West Philadelphia High School's Academy of Applied and Technical Sciences. Hauger and his students in the Academy have grabbed headlines over the past few years by building the world's first high-performance, environmentally-friendly cars. Their cars consistently win top honors at the Tour de Sol, a prestigious national green car competition. In fact, Hauger and his urban students have repeatedly bested teams from universities like MIT. Their story is incredibly inspiring. (Click here for PublicSchoolInsights.org's account about the Academy's program.)

In the interview, Hauger offers a ringing endorsement of programs that bring hands-on learning into the school day. He describes his own program's genesis, some of the obstacles it has faced, his work with community partners, and lessons he and his students have learned along the way. It's truly worth a listen.

Hauger also poses a very interesting question: If a bunch of high school students in impoverished West Philly can create a high-performance car that gets over 50 miles to the gallon, why won't the major car companies?

Here's an easier question: Do you know of any career and technical education programs that are improving students' academic outcomes? Let us know by leaving a comment below or by sharing your story through our story tool.

Listen to a five-minute excerpt from my interview with Hauger:

You can listen to my entire 14-minute interview with Simon Hauger here.

Or check out the transcript of the highlights below:

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: I thought I'd start today by asking you to sum up in your own words what you and your students have accomplished at the academy.

HAUGER: We began an after-school program--I guess it's about eight years or nine years ago now--and we were looking for ways to partner with the vocational automotive teachers in my program. We created this after-school program to meld the vocational and the academic sides, and try to create project-based learning.

The students started with an electric go-cart and did well at the local Philadelphia Science Fair. Then we branched off and did an electric-powered Jeep. We had a Jeep Wrangler that was donated to the program sitting around, and the kids had read up on "Mother Earth News" how to convert a truck to electric power. We thought that would be a great science fair project.

Then we stumbled upon the Tour de Sol, where we began to compete in 2000. By 2002 we had won our first Tour de Sol. There were 41 teams that year, [including] a group of MIT graduates and some other top-level teams. And we ended up beating them as an inner-city high school: So that added a lot of enthusiasm and self-confidence to the program.

We continued after the 2002 Tour de Sol--after the first victory--and the kids came back and pondered why hybrid vehicles at that point in time were not catching on.

And we decided to try to redesign the hybrid. We brainstormed through the summer program: How could we make a hybrid more attractive? And so we designed the hybrid sports car that's been in the news so much. Instead of taking a fuel efficiency approach, we took a performance/fuel efficiency approach, and we made a very, very attractive hybrid sports car that's extremely fast and still gets over 50 miles to the gallon. We took that to the Tour de Sol in 2005.

We didn't design it to win the race-we designed it to challenge what a hybrid could look like and behave like. And we ended up winning the race anyway, which was a surprise to everybody, including ourselves. Then we returned in 2006 and we thought we were going to be very competitive, and we won the race again.

What's really been delightful about that particular project is that when students are really given the opportunity to dream big, and adults get around them to figure out how to make it happen, they can do wonderful things. In 2002, nobody was thinking about a hybrid sports car that goes zero to 60 in less than 5 seconds and gets over 50 miles to the gallon, burning biodiesel fuel. That wasn't on the radar of anybody--[on] anybody's screen--and a group of urban students, with the help of their teachers, dreamt up that vision, and then we figured out how to make it a reality.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: In other words, it's not really your grandfather's vocational education we're talking about here...

HAUGER: Not at all. And that's true across most vocation[al programs]--they actually call them "career and technical education programs" now. And I think that's true across most of them. I can speak directly for the automotive program that I run now.

I see students who are...We had one who graduated last year. His IQ was way, way, way above average, but you couldn't sit him in a desk for 90 minutes. Conceptually, he was brilliant, but he learned and expressed knowledge more with his hands and more in active means than sitting with paper and pencil.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: You mentioned earlier in this conversation that the Academy has been able to combine academic and career and technical goals.

HAUGER: Yes.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: I was wondering if you could elaborate on that just a little bit more.

HAUGER: Sure. I believe [it] is true that most vocational or career technical education programs [are] still grounded in a college prep curriculum. That's true in Philadelphia. What we found is that as we work together as a team and we find ways to integrate what's going on in the academic classroom with what's going on in the shop, it really brings both experiences alive for the students.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: What kind of obstacles did you face as you tried to put this whole project together?

HAUGER: One of the challenges is finding room during the school day to do creative project-based learning. It's messy and it's challenging. So that's one of the big challenges. The things that we've started learning and seeing by doing these projects about how kids learn-we tried to move some of that into the school. That's definitely an obstacle that we continue to battle.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Do you have any other lessons you think other educators, community members, parents-people who might be listening to this-should hear?

HAUGER: I have two messages. One is to encourage the folks who go in the trenches every day to fight it out-that we really do touch children's lives. And the second is, for the folks who are around teachers who are doing this work, to encourage them and support them in any way that you can. I think it's critical work, and we need great teachers working in the most challenging circumstances.

Photo from NESEA's 2006 Tour de Sol