feature
Designing
2021 MS ACTE Counselor of the Year Builds Success Stories for Students, Industry Partners
Heather Craig Pascagoula-Gautier School District’s (PGSD’s) Derek Read may have begun as a literal designer for Ingalls Shipbuilding, but after overhauling his own career he gradually shifted to the role of assisting students in designing their futures as a career and technical education counselor at PGSD’s College and Career Technical Institute (CCTI). Read is now the center’s director, but he began at PGSD in 2001 as a Drafting and Design teacher and eventual20
Summer 2022
ly became a counselor when students who were not even in CTE classes began coming to him for advice. After his counseling career culminated in being named 2021’s Counselor of the Year by the Mississippi Association for Career and Technical Education (MS ACTE), Read took on the director’s role and focused on cultivating partnerships. In discussing his original career move from teacher to counselor, Read explains that students “would come and ask me about careers and what they should do with their lives because their
friends would tell them ‘You’ve got to go talk to Mr. Read.’ My principal came to me and said, ‘Have you ever thought about becoming a Read counselor?’” After Hurricane Katrina, Read attended a two-year summer program at the University of Southern Mississippi that allowed him to become a counselor, but he waited for his dream job — continuing work as a drafting teacher at PGSD’s
