The Latest from Jonathan's Shop (Class)

Kerry Burton

Member
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Location
Orem, Utah
So Jonathan (Shively) ... as far as I know you're the only active woodshop teacher in the group. I never had the chance to take a shop class in school (too busy with "college prep" stuff, I guess) so I've been wondering....

With school starting up and all, what are the plans for this year's class(es)?

  • Do you handle more than one class each term?
  • Are the classes organized by age/grade? Interest/topic? Some other way?
  • Do you have a set schedule for the projects to be tackled in each class?
  • What's the overall participation like? (Dozens of students, hundreds?)

But mostly ...

  • Is the shop still coming up to speed this year, or is it already humming along?
  • If it's "humming", what are some of the projects that are underway?

If it's OK with you (and anyone else that cares) I think it would be cool to see you update this thread throughout the school year. You could do separate threads on individual projects, but this thread could be almost like a "blog within a forum" where you keep us up-to-date on the education of today's young woodworkers.

Dumb idea? Interesting?
 
Hey, it is a tough job but someone has to do it!!!;)
My day starts around 5 am, feed calves, water and check to make sure all livestock are where they should be.
6:40 am I am pulling my bus out of the driveway. At school with an empty bus by 7:30 (school starts 7:40)
First hour is a Welding I class. They are still in the classroom, will be for probably another two weeks. Have gone through welding rod ID and types of joints, still have lighting and shutdown of the oxy-acetylene torch and shop safety rules to do.
Second hour is a Welding II class, have an Independent Study student in there that is cutting metal all hour 3 days a week, then he can use the other 2 days for his own projects. They are in the shop right now. They had to run some beads just to refresh their brains, fingers and eyes. Now they are working on a pad weld and will soon be cutting with the torch and have to build a steel box (generally around 5"x5").
Third hour is a Woods I class. Anything from special ed (mental as well as physical handicaps), freshman to seniors. We have covered the shop safety rules, they have passed their tests (100%) before allowed to work in the shop. Have two students still studying. We have turned a square piece of wood round with a roughing gouge. Now we are turning eggs which they learn to use a parting tool along with the bull nosed chisel. Then it will be the snowman and the skew comes into play there. After the snowman, we will start on the soldier pens.
Fourth hour is a Woods II class. They also are in the shop. They turned an egg and a snowman already (gives my Woods I students something to see). They are now working on an angel with wings. The wings are their first time turning air/shadows.
Fifth and Sixth hours are Woods I classes again.

Welding classes, I have 7 welding stations, have an average of 15-18 students per class.

Woods classes, I have 8 JET minis, generally try to keep it under 18 students, would love 16 but first semester is large, remediation classes for state testing really pull the numbers of available students down to near nothing second semester.


Don't think I am the only woods teacher. John Daughtery, you want to list your day?

Next Wednesday, going to Hoosier Bat Company in Valparaiso, IN. They make bats for the majors, minors and HS baseball teams. Should be a good trip.

Oh yeah, start loading elementary students at 2:20, HS at 2:45, back home by 3:40, in the house by 6 if all goes well. See, easy!!!!
 
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Thanks for the great "kickoff" write up! :thumb:

For your Woods X classes, you only mentioned instruction (& equipment & projects) for woodturning. Is that because you start the term with turning before going onto flatwork, etc ... or is turning all there is? :huh:
 
Thanks for the great "kickoff" write up! :thumb:

For your Woods X classes, you only mentioned instruction (& equipment & projects) for woodturning. Is that because you start the term with turning before going onto flatwork, etc ... or is turning all there is? :huh:

Our school woodshop had been dismantled for over 4 years before I approached the school board about a turning class. Turning is all we do to an extent. I do teach interested students that are waiting on a lathe how to make a bandsaw box. We do a lot of glue ups of segmented pen blanks. Built a sled last year for a table saw and we are trying to be successful with the celtic knot pen blank.
 
OK - that would explain your references to "projects for my advanced turning students" in the past.

That's too bad about the shop being dismantled - which sounds familiar now that you mention it. :( So, no cabinetry or flatwork furniture to speak of ... but I can see some creativity possible with a table saw, a bandsaw, a drill press and a lathe.

Do you get in trouble if anything "too flat" comes out of the shop? :)
 
I wish I was a shop teacher, but alas I am a "core" curriculum teacher. I teach seventh and eighth grade science. For anyone interested my day starts at 8 am. I teach 7 periods 45 min each. First, third, and sixth are 8th grade with 31, 32, 32 in each class. Fourth, fifth, and seventh period is seventh grade. This years seventh grade is smaller than normal and I only have 24, 25, 23 in each class. I have a 20 min. advisement period with 12 kids and I have to have 20 min. of "movement" each day because apparently we are all getting fat.

At the high school that we feed they have machine shop and what they call construction core. The construction core is geared more toward generally carpentry. I don't think we do a very good job of vocational education.
 
OK - that would explain your references to "projects for my advanced turning students" in the past.

That's too bad about the shop being dismantled - which sounds familiar now that you mention it. :( So, no cabinetry or flatwork furniture to speak of ... but I can see some creativity possible with a table saw, a bandsaw, a drill press and a lathe.

Do you get in trouble if anything "too flat" comes out of the shop? :)


The shop being dismantled/mothballed was an issue of poor teachers letting students destroy the equipment that was there. It became a safety issue and no positive learning so can't really blame the school with their decision. I actually inherited two drill presses that aren't worth a hoot. Two table saws, one works the other doesn't. A big old ox of a planer and jointer that I have never spent time working on and don't do their job well at all, probably poor blades. And two bandsaws that I retired, new bearings in the one, new switches and they are good.
No, no concerns whatsoever on the final products from either of my shops. Quality products, safe practices and good student enrollment keep my school board members happy.

I would have sworn John Daughtery was a middle school ITE instructor. Sorry John. Let's see, Jim Hagar is a retired Ag. teacher. Someone else is a woods teacher, I need to think on this some more.
 
Hey, it is a tough job but someone has to do it!!!;)
My day starts around 5 am...back home by 3:40, in the house by 6 if all goes well. See, easy!!!!

OK, so what do you do with all your spare time? :rofl: Probably just hanging out watching Oprah and eating bon-bons, right? :p

It's a shame that a lot of the Industrial Education infrastructure (tools, facilities, and teachers) has gotten spread so thin in this country. My hat's off to you and other teachers who continue to carry the torch. :thumb:
 
It's a shame that a lot of the Industrial Education infrastructure (tools, facilities, and teachers) has gotten spread so thin in this country. My hat's off to you and other teachers who continue to carry the torch. :thumb:

you know way back around the time I was graduating from HS. The schools that had shop classes all started dropping them and letting the teachers go.
This was back in the early '80's.
I asked my old graphic arts teacher why?
You know what he told me?..
"the schools have decided they don't WANT those programs here. Those types of students will be sent over to tech"
Up until that time and for a time afterwards going to "tech" meant you were a kid that wasnt good for much else but "menial" labor. Training for jobs that no one wanted. The emphasis was all on "white collar" training and academics, anyone who went to "tech" was usually one of those "troublemakers", came from a "broken home" etc.
I remember my father's reaction when I told him I wanted to go to "tech" and study carpentry. That I had no intention of going into the "white collar" world.
He hit the roof. "No kid of mine is going to be a "carpenter"! you are going to college and you are going to make something of yourself!"
Kind of sad, his father was a carpenter, his grandfather was a carpenter. He worked for the local edison all but one of his brothers were electricians.....
Wish I could have been there to see his face (I told him over the phone) when I told him I had quit my job at the phone company and opened my own carpentry business at 35 years of age. The silence was deafening.

Jonathan what you and all the other "shop" teachers are doing is Awesome!
It's nice to see that "shop" classes are still being taught.
It took about 20 years here but finally the "tech" schools don't have the stigma they once had and have gained a lot of credibility. Although the schools around here still dont teach shop classes.... A shame really, when I was in what they called junior high at the time it was mandatory that a student took a shop class each semester. Everyone had to take cooking, sewing, woodshop and print shop. heck now they dont even have phys ed classes anymore......... (and they all scratch their heads at our kids being "fat")

I tip my hat to you and your brothers and sisters Jonathan!
 
Ditto Bob.

Jonathan I think you will be remembered and honored at least in thought by many of the kids you teach for many years to come in their lives.
Often i think back to my Industrial Arts days and remember all the teachers of Shop both metalwork and woodwork with fond memories and great detail. Do the best you can to keep it alive for their sake. The faceless administrators that do away with programs like this should be put on the chopping block and sent to live in the desert for punishment (and i mean real desert like say Sahara) then they too can live a life so sterile. A guy like you is worth his weight in Gold. Its a pity todays society does not realize this. Keep at it bud.

Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk
 
This may border on political and if so, I'll delete the post, but schools are dropping the ball on their structure and what is being taught. There's nothing wrong with a good craftsman working with his hands.

I think we could take some lessons from some of the foreign nations and their school system. In Trinidad they have what they call the National Exams about the end of or beginning of sixth/seventh grade. If you don't pass them, then you are moved into apprentice programs. If you do pass, then you are prepared for college. College in Trinidad is usually at the country's expense, not the students... they are a small nation of just over 1 million and their literacy rate is almost double ours.

I had a young German student that worked in the international traffic industry that was sent over to visit with my company for a 6 month tour as an exchange type student. Germany also has an apprentice type program and I think all or most students that graduate from school are posted in a program, and I only suppose the industry is of their choice... my student's father was a manager in a counterpart company in Germany that we worked closely with, so his choice may not have been his... nonetheless, he was enthusiastic about learning and in some cases was ahead of some of the trainees we had here that had been in the industry for a couple of years... after his return to Germany, he was posted in several different positions within the company to learn all aspects of international freight forwarding. Last I heard at about 23 or 24 years of age, he was already moving into a management position.

I graduated from HS over 50 years ago, but we had no shop type classes of any sort... we did have the FFA (Future Farmers of America) or Ag classes which suppose was directly related to the fact that ours was a farming community. I don't think even those classes are offered today.
 
I would have sworn John Daughtery was a middle school ITE instructor. Sorry John. Let's see, Jim Hagar is a retired Ag. teacher. Someone else is a woods teacher, I need to think on this some more.

Yep, sure was, glad I ain't now:rofl: I have to laugh each year as you guys start back at it and I get to play in my shop all day long without worrying about some kid wrecking my tools or hurting themselves. I got to teach a lot of carpentry classes over the 28 years that I taught and for the first 6-8 a woodwork class before the state saw fit to take that out of the ag curriculum.:dunno:

Hey Jonathan, I'll be at the National FFA Convention in the career show at the CEV Multimedia booth if you go up there please come by and visit. We'll find a lot of things to talk about I'm sure and I can show you some fantastic curriculum for those welding classes and any ag related subject you might be teaching. We don't have anything for your turning classes but we do have some really good general safety curriculum. I retired alright but I sure flunked. Now have a full time cabinet shop and a part time curriculum consultant position. I didn't want to quit just didn't want to work in a school anymore.:thumb:
 
My most memerabile time in high school was in the industrial Arts, Vo Ag, and Auto Mech. classes. The auto mech class teacher was the best, if you wanted to learn he had all the time in the world for you. He'd come in early, stay late and be there for you on the weekends. He also taught metals. We had to gas weld 4 triangles that had 1 1/2" sides without blowing thru or have a burnt off point to pass. It was tough. It took a couple of tries before we figured out the trick to it. I started out not wanting any of my kids to follow in my footsteps of being a service tech, but my son did just that. I am proud of him as he can figure out alot of mechanical things by looking. With that being said I am proud of all 3 of my kids. I have a son that is a music teacher, but didn't get a contract this year so is home being Mr. Mom to my grandson and my daughter is the assitant manager at a resteraunt. She went to be an accountant and worked for a privet firm, but lose her job when tax season was over. She missed the resteraunt business as she had been a waitress and then found this position and loves it.
 
The loss of Ind. Arts/Tech. Ed. programs in Kansas over the years has been due to few available teachers and budgeting issues. Operating a full blown Ind. Arts/Tech. Ed. program is expensive and takes a lot of floor space. When school boards were unable to find teachers, it didn't take long for them to find other uses for that money and space. The most recent hit on all electives are mandates such as NCLB. As the demands of those mandates increase, the students have less and less time in their schedule for elective classes.

Ike
Retired Tech. Ed. Teacher:D
 
Wayne, you hit the nail on the head for my school. Repurposing the rooms/shop was golden for them and their space concerns. No Child Left Behind act, my first semester is filled to and beyond capacity. Second semester is pretty sparse, kids doing remediation classes hardly leaves anyone for the electives.
 
It is a hard road to follow. On the one hand you have the need for the shop classes. On the other hand you have the tax payers screaming to cut cost. Which go up 5% a year no matter what they do. The school is out of room and no money to add on tax payers screaming for cuts so the only choice is to cut shop and turn it into classroom space. Funny thing around here is the school board always goes after shop and the arts first. Heaven forbid they drop any of the sports programs. A few years back our school dropped the metal shop and added lacrosse and track. :doh::doh:
Than toss in the fact that most people have no interest in there kid working in any shop class related field. Myself included in that list but not for the same reasons as most. I know that in order to make a living in this field with no schooling you are going to be cold in the winter, hot in the summer, dirty all the time. You will work when there is work and starve when the work drys up. You will compete for every job at some of the lowest wages. Funny a man has no problem paying a lawyer $250 an hour to sue the roofer that did a poor job on his roof. But that same man took the lowest price he could find on said roof and did not look into the guy he hired to do said roofing. :doh:
So no I would much rather my kids where the lawyer or the school teacher.:thumb:
But on my side I was to work in the field from day one for I had no interest in any form of schooling:doh::huh::huh:
And thank god we had a full shop program.:thumb::thumb::thumb:
 
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