First School Visit – Sept 19, 2007
After spending the day at OKM here are some thoughts and ideas that I observed.
The most important lesson that both the metal shop teacher and the wood shop teacher felt the students needed to learn was the skill of sketching. The students are unable to communicate their ideas to others properly without being able to mentally visualize the object. Both teachers were currently conducting lessons on three dimensional and two dimensional views.
An idea that I saw one of the teachers use in a safety lesson was using a pair of students to demonstrate a piece of equipment in the shop. Every piece of equipment was done by a different group of students. Once the student went over the safety sheet the teacher would then emphasize some key points and to cover anything that the students might not have covered. The students appeared to pay more attention to the students conducting the lesson than they would if the teacher was to give the lesson. I believe that you always learn more completely when you are forced to teach a topic to others.
A project idea that the wood shop teacher used was to give every student a wood pallet to create anything that they could design for the amount of wood they had. I like this project because it really pushes the student to be creative with what they have to work with. This will also reinforce the skill of sketching. The big benefit to this idea is the cost. It would be very easy to acquire the wood pallets at little or more likely no cost. The drawback was the quality of the wood. The pallets that the teacher supplied the students were very poor quality. There was water damage and cracking on most boards. It seemed to disappoint the students and take some of the thrill out of the project. I think it would be possible to obtain pretty good wood pallets for the students but it still won’t be maple.
I asked the teachers about the possibility of creating new classes such as a duel credit class in the trades. At OKM it would not be possible to obtain the approval to begin a class in that area because it is not the focus of that school and would be drawing funding away from areas that the administration wants to promote. It is only possible to be as creative and innovative as your school will allow you to be.
