Henrico’s Top Teachers – Willie Cline, ACE Center-Highland Springs HS

Willie Cline was hesitant when someone asked if he wanted to be a teacher. He’s an electrician who had never taught before, and he wasn’t sure he’d be any good at it. But he gave it a shot because he loves helping people.

Now 15 years later, Cline said there's no other career that he would rather have. Nothing compares to helping a young person further their career and be successful in life.

Cline teaches electricity at the ACE Center at Highland Springs High School. The two-year electricity program begins in students’ junior year of high school. They spend all day, every other day with Cline learning the trade. In their senior year, each student spends that time in a paid apprenticeship, and is graded by how well they work on the job site. By 22 years old, these students are making a salary close to $70,000.

“A lot of these students are indecisive, they don't know whether they want to go to college,” Cline said. “If you ask every one of them, they're all going to raise their hand. But yet we know that not everyone is going to do it.”

Cline never went to college himself, but he owns two houses. (Not that he’s bragging – he was the "poor kid" in high school.)

“I know how to make a living and I know how to be successful with a trade,” he said. “I'm here to show students that they can too.”

Cline’s favorite part of his job, he said, is watching students obtain employment, buy their first houses and have kids.

“That is indescribable, to see them take a skill and use it as a career as a means to make not just money, but to make their families and to be able to support their families with it,” he said. “A lot of them still text me and say, 'look at my new house,' 'hey, look at look at my baby girl,’ or ‘how are you doing, let me tell you about my day.’”

His students look up to him, and he doesn’t take that for granted.

Each year, Cline doesn’t get a haircut before the first day of school (despite his wife’s opinion on the matter) and wears his old shoes to school. He does it because he knows some of his students won't have the ability to get a haircut or wear new school shoes, and he doesn’t want them to feel like they're out of place.

“Whenever you can have empathy and show empathy to students and they see that you're a real person and you are there to help, they they will quickly latch on to you,” he said. “My life is an open book. I tell them pretty much my whole career and my life if it helps them to further their career or to be better than I am better than I was at that age.”

In addition to teaching students how to be electricians, Cline also teaches “soft skills” like tying a necktie, writing a resume, proper handshakes and writing cursive – all things to prepare them to enter the workforce and build their lives after graduating high school.