If anyone will be in the Cincinnati area next week, there will be an auction for the supplies to Finneytown’s high school shop class. Apparently the shop teacher retired so they are closing down the shop.
Here’s the link. http://www.auctionzip.com/cgi-bin/auctionview.cgi?lid=630496&kwd=&zip=45231&category=0
Replies
That's a crying #### shame that no one can be found to carry on the tradition.
"That's a crying #### shame that no one can be found to carry on the tradition."
I know, I wish I would have known they were looking (if they were in the first place). I would have been their shop teacher. I got nothing going on right now anyway.
Edited 6/18/2009 3:24 pm ET by mvflaim
mv,when a school shop closes in the los angeles area it might remain open if the administration does a bit of homework. namely, shop-type programs can be funded using rop or regional occupation program money. most high school shop classes are kept going this way. it might be worth it for you to do the homework. maybe check online to see what rop classes are offered in your area. schools get their funding through ada which stands for average daily attendance. in calif. that is, i think, about 25 bucks/day/student. if a class/teacher is rop funded it behooves the administration to open it up because it is a win-win set up for both rop and the high school as both collect ada. (yes, it is double-dipping).
eef
Thanks eef, I'll check into it.
Mike
In 2000 When I checked into teaching in an ROP program while I was living in CA it paid about $10,000 less than teaching Industrial Arts. In 1984 I began teaching both an ROP program and IA and it paid quite well. Today that same program is shut down to no child left behind.
There just doesn't seem to be a whole lot emphasis placed on trade skills anymore. No one seems to want to work with their hands anymore. True craftsman are a dying breed. ;-(
not in china !!!!
Not really...
A craftsmen (shifu) is close to the bottom of the list of desired professions (just ab bit above lawyers and business people).
Out of the craftsmen the woodworkers are the lowest ranked.
At the top are laoshi (literaty, intelligenzia or whatever you want to call them). It's a Confucian sort of thing.
Engineers (preferably with a Ph.D. degree from a top 10 US University) are highly regarded these days, too.
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Chris Scholz
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Galoot-Tools
Service tech all my working life (for the most part). Well paid.. Well for a grunt as I was.. My family never went hungry.. but no Jaguar out in the driveway alongside of two Lexus 'runaround' cars.
I never learned well from books.. But I do read them even to this day. But now I fall asleep if I read more than three pages from a book!. I learn by doing or at least trying to do...
When in high school I was #one of many# so called 'dummy kid' and we were put into all kinds of shop classes. Hell, I even took sewing with the girls! That was punishment for this boy???
All my shop teachers #except for the sewing class# were 'gruff' old men that took no BS from anybody but somehow you knew he was trying to help you as he smacked ya' upside the head..
I learned 10 times more in one second getting a head knock #not anything mean# than a whole day in another 'regular' class.
Except for a very rare occasion all the shop kids got along together and no bully ever picked on any of us. We stuck together and a bully had more than just one to fight!
We got along because we liked each other and would 'rub it in' if somebody in class go out of line..
And Yes we had Homework and Tests and Reports and all sorts of reading and writhing and RitMeTick to do in shop and homework. Never seemed like school work and we had fun and LEARNED much more that chopping wood or grinding/hammering metal.. And I sure loved that year of sewing class. I met more girls than any guy in school. To bad I already had my sweetheart I met in kindergarten!
It REALLY is a shame.. Some kid now doing drugs and what street kids do when they should/could be in School. In a Shop class, with friends.. AND learn about life and how to do better than your friend that just made something you wish you could do!
And at the time, you had to study and study some more. You had to pass ALL of your other shop classes with at least a C+ to go to Automotive class! Which I think at the time was like going to heaven... Those that were B average were the bosses in Car Class! Such fun!
Yes I realize that schools are short of money and cutting Shop and Band..
I have three daughters that just loved Band.. What about that little Girl that want to be in Band or that Girl that wanted to be a Cheer Leader?
If Shop is cut then all things should be cut except Reading/Writing #without a computer# and Math and maybe some History thrown in?
As in the Brits Comedy DVD's .. Carry On!
Hey Will, I was down on a creek fishing near where I grew up over the weekend. Well,,,,,,,,,, the fish weren't cooperating, so I was fooling around with my camera taking some macros of dragonflies in a floating weed-bed, when an older man fished by. We greeted and talked for a while before introducing ourselves. He turned out to be my shop teacher from high school. I was glad to hear that the shop class is alive and well in that small rural town. I would like to have talked with him more, but he had his mind on catching fish at the time. He caught one right near me too. I guess I should have taken fishing from him too. ha
A similar thing happened to me. I was working in the Sierra Nevada mountains and after a few days there one of the men said to me that he wanted to introduce me to his brother in law who does woodworking. It turned out to be my junior high school shop teacher. It is a small world.
My step-father (a wonderful man now passed on) was a fisherman. When he fished and took anybody along no one could talk or make any noise, period. He was VERY serious about his fishing.
I only met one of my old teachers from high school. She was really old then and taught ancient and modern History (Two different classes). She was a wonderful teacher. I was in the Army at the time when I read in my local paper (mailed to me each day) that she died. I asked my commanding officer for some emergency leave and he said it was only allowed for family emergencies. He then asked who it was? I showed him the paper and he read awhile and then told me he would see about if he could bend the rules. He said that she was his History teacher.
Anyway, I met my commanding officer at the funeral... He was a (full) Bird Colonel so I guess he had ways to pull it off for my leave..
Well I agree the under funded programs limp to death. We still have an IA program here but nothing to write about.But going back to the IA teachers in the mid seventies. I went to the local Jesuit high school for 2 years. The first teacher Claude Pitzel was a great teacher. his assistant had breath to kill a vulture, and a bit of a twit.
We went through drafting, basic electrical, welding, woodwork, motor shop and plastics.One day we were rebuilding an old 5 hp Wisconson engine. Mr Pitzel every day would say "clean up time boys, cleanup time" from his metal desk, and PA system.
So I had the bright idea to hook up the magneto to his desk and give it a pull at the right moment. There was a jerk in his voice and a crackle on the PA system.
He casually walks out and says"so I see you have fiqured out magneto's"Fast forward 15 years and I got a job writing (now dead) Shoe repair program. The first day on the job thy say you have to meet the program head. So my superviser takes me into meet this big dude. Well I walk in and the super goes to introduce me and Mr. Pitzel sticks out his hand and says "Hi Brendan" The super looks confused and Mr Pitzel explained I was a good student, egear to learn, and knows about magneto's.Well I didn't know weather to s3it or laugh. We ended up having a good laugh and we got along very well.
Now the welding teacher at the next high school is another story, today he would be in jail.
Maybe with their hands, but no craftsmanshipship skills!
Actually there are probably a lot of kids, who would want to do career prep classes if given the chance. But most school districts, are looking at minimal cost classes. Thus they push kids into an academic track, (a book lasts 6 to eight years), and eliminate shop, home economics, and business classes/programs because they cost more due to insurance, equipment, and square foot per student, etc. Colleges, are forever talking about getting rid of engineering programs, because they have lower enrollement, and higher costs per sutdent due to all the labs it takes to have an accredited program. What they don't seem to notice, is that Engineering Colleges are the ones that tend to bring in high dollar research grants. I once had to point out that one of my Engineering Professors had brought in over $1,000,000 in research funding every year for five years. My English Professor, hadn't brought anything into the University's coffers besides the tuition for the students in the three classes he taught each semester. Yet, they wanted to get rid of the Engineering Professor, because he insisted on teaching a class to one student.
Thatz why our society is going to hell in a handbasket!
"Colleges, are forever talking about getting rid of engineering programs, because they have lower enrollement, and higher costs per sutdent due to all the labs it takes to have an accredited program.What they don't seem to notice, is that Engineering Colleges are the ones that tend to bring in high dollar research grants. I once had to point out that one of my Engineering Professors had brought in over $1,000,000 in research funding every year for five years. My English Professor, hadn't brought anything into the University's coffers besides the tuition for the students in the three classes he taught each semester. Yet, they wanted to get rid of the Engineering Professor, because he insisted on teaching a class to one student."Not sure which colleges you are referring to but the university I work and teach at the engineering department seems to get a good portion of support and funding per student. And is no where near being phased out. While it is true that a lot of engineering departments bring in money to a university debating the worthiness of one department over another seems rather irrelevant to me. Having an excellent engineering program is essentially meaningless without a well rounded education to support the it. Graduating tech nerds without insight into the global, social or political context makes for minds that don't know how to think critically.
I've seen my fair share of students that are brilliant technicians but horrible at communicating their thoughts and should be sent back to the 10th grade for remedial english skills.
I'm a retired woodshop teacher. After I retired they did away with my 35 year program.
There are still some districts that don't buy into this logic. Graduates in woodworking are having no trouble finding jobs in Illinois. There are only 2 nearby Universities that still offer degrees in woodworking.
When I checked into teaching at the high school level again (after leaving for 16 years) and the college level there was about a $32,000 difference. So I had to decide not only on the basis of money but also would the high school program survive. When I was teaching in the high school the state came to interview me because of what they had heard about my program. I spent several hours with them. A few years ago that program was shut down because of the no child left behind nonsense.When I left teaching my rent was about 1/2 of my take home pay. I had gone from being a general contractor to a teacher with a reduction of about 70% in pay. When I left teaching I went on to work for the largest hardwood distributor at the time and was paid more than double what I was teaching. I had paid vacation and great benefits.The average Industrial Arts teacher lasts three years in the field teaching. Universities do not like IA programs because the students are few and the costs are higher than a regular program.
Edited 6/21/2009 3:59 pm by gb93433
My first year was 1970 at $7200.00. I retired 35 yers later with a salary of $101,000. I never felt stressed by the economy and/or education trends, I knew I would always have a job.
Summers were spent making furniture and earning decent additional money. My teaching co-workers spent money in the summer.
I would suggest to any young man, consider teaching woodworking, there are still jobs out there.
Were you administrator? I know of few professors I teach with who make that much.
The problem is all of you are thinking trades/woodshop. Some of the best woodworking programs - not woodshop, but true creative woodworking programs can be found in strict academic environments.
The Gilman School (tuition starting at 16K) requires - repeat requires woodworking for their students from K through the 8th grade and it is an elective through high school grades. By the 8th grade, students are designing and building boats, musical instruments, furniture, etc. And their graduates go on to all the name colleges/universities (including Rhode Island School of Design for Applied Woodworking).
Administrations in schools like these recognize that their is more to education than the core curriculum (English, Math, Science, Social Studies, Foreign Language). Woodworking teaches Math, Science, problem solving, creativity and I could go on. Woodshop programs close because folks haven't learned to present them in new, more creative ways.
One of the early books published by Taunton Press was "Woodworking For Kids" by Richard Starr, a woodworking teacher in a middle school. Take a look at what he was doing with middle schoolers. And if you search the Taunton web site you will find http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/SkillsAndTechniques/SkillsAndTechniquesArticle.aspx?id=29548 with detail about programs.
e,
your assessment holds water, as far as i am concerned. by a stroke of fortune, i get to teach, for the first time in 17 years, an advanced class next september. i have much to prepare.
eef
Well that's great. I got more fun from teaching at risk high schoolers than anything else. My program put them to work right away - saftey and a brief explanation of what/why we were doing something. Everything was done initially by hand.
Their first project was a foot stool - all angles and a four dovetails. Very good experience for them. And they learned two points:
1) A craftsman is alway learning but is confident because he/she knows how to recover from their mistakes;
2) And how smooth should I sand this? As smooth as a baby's bottom - they got the message. And they loved to sharpen chisels to "scary sharp." They had no idea how simple yet important that task is.
good morning,
it's 30 people that need to be kept busy and learning. this translates to a great many similar tools, if all are engaged in the same activity. there just is no foreseen budget to allow for this. in the past, i've had each one plan, design and build their own desired item. this makes it possible to have everyone busy using myriad tools and not all waiting to "get" to use a few available tools and/or machines. it will be 9 months with the same kids, plenty of time to get things done. i agree that learning from mistakes is VERY important. staying a bit ahead of my mistakes, even more so. and yes, sharpening and keeping it sharp is, most certainly on the "must-learn" list.
the first 6 years of my teaching career were spent in the company of inner-city children. daily drama, fights, vandalism, visits from cops and more than one sad, sad death was how i got to cut my teeth. valuable experience and it was mostly learning from mistakes. the last 11 years has blessed me with a more sedate crop of students. there are still serious hardships but alot less gun-play.
i am hopeful for a good year. nice talking with you.
eef
No, extra pay duties were basketball,student council,track.
This is a Chicago suburb with well to do parents.
I met Jim, the shop teacher, a few years ago. Heck of a nice guy.
I'm currently reading this book, written by a Ph.D. who, after doing a brief stint as a consultant, opened his own motorcycle repair shop.
http://www.amazon.com/Shop-Class-Soulcraft-Inquiry-Value/dp/1594202230/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=booksqid=1245516459&sr=8-1
Thanks for the link! I just ordered the book as it looks quite interesting.
Mike
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