How Can We Close the Skills Gap? A High School Shop Teacher Has Ideas.

In manufacturing, if you ask “why” something failed enough times, you usually find out a person or process was wrong or out of place. That is the current state of vocational education in America.

I have been a shop teacher for 14 years, and the reason I received my first job as a middle-school shop teacher is because nobody else applied. As a certified agriculture instructor, I shouldn't have received the phone call.

Over the last several years, I have been trying to make changes to our educational system to help close the skills gap. I believe the skills gap is a direct result of the shortage of quality shop teachers. I use the term “shop” because we need old-school, wrench-turning, woodworking and welding classes back in our schools.  These programs have been phased out as teachers retired and been replaced with agriculture or CAD/engineering classes, if they were replaced at all.

Now, I am not discounting the need for those two subjects, but to be clear, as someone who is certified to teach both, there is no substitute for kids getting dirty while in school.  While taking a graduate class, I did a white paper on the status of shop teachers in Missouri. The results are concerning and warrant further investigation.

Who Is Signing Up to Teach?

First, it is important to note that in the United States, we generally have two ways at the K-12 level to get students interested in the trades. We have our high schools that will have an agriculture instructor or a technology education teacher, or both. These classes are available to take from 9th to 12th grade. 

The other way we train our workforce is at vocational technical centers, which are available from 11th to 12th grade.

My paper focused on the qualifications and certifications of technology education (tech-ed) teachers from 2011 to 2021.  While various programs are in place to become a tech ed teacher, one of the most common is a bachelor's degree program. In Missouri, we have three universities offering this program, one of which I directly created and is less than five years old. The most prominent program only graduated 10 students from 2011-2021, and five of those decided to work in private-sector manufacturing.  

We had 428 technical programs in the state of Missouri during that period. The demand for teachers far outpaces the supply. In 2011, we had 325 traditionally certified teachers in classes, and in 2021 we had 156.

In the next 13 years, all of these teachers will be eligible for retirement. I can promise you that many will retire at first eligibility. So, who is signing up to teach these classes? 

Low Bar for Teacher Certification

This answer should concern you. In Missouri, once you are certified to teach any subject, all you have to do is take a written exam in the new subject area you would like to teach. If you pass that exam, you are now certified to teach that subject. That's right—you can go to college for music education and even if your welds look like rolled out Play-Doh, you can teach tech ed at the high school.

VOTEC's instructors must have some industry experience to become an instructor, but the missing component we need is technically skilled middle and high school teachers who can introduce machining, welding, electricity and woodworking to students before they pick a career path at the VOTEC. You can’t get kids excited about something they haven’t tried out. It is kind of like sushi in that respect.

Currently, in Missouri, 71% of our technical education programs at the middle- and high-school levels are being taught by teachers with a math or science degree. Now don't get me wrong, without these teachers, these schools may have shut down the program altogether. Knowing that these teachers need professional development in the skilled trades, there are curriculum programs that can be purchased that emphasize the math and sciences through CAD and robotics.

Again, while these are worthwhile subjects, I feel they neglect the real-world problem-solving process of woodworking, metal fabrication and wrench-turning. These subjects neglect kids who don't do well in technical settings and don't expose our students to heavy and dangerous machinery that they may find in the industry. School administrators are risk-averse, and in the past have had a negative view of the trades. Between them and the counselors, our programs are often filled with kids who are very underprepared. It's hard to make a machinist out of a kid who can't read a ruler.

Establishing a Community College/University Partnership

So how do we fix this system? As mentioned, I created a tech-ed program. While I was working at a community college as a manufacturing instructor, our school was approached by a neighboring university about creating a partnership. They were open to ideas, and I pitched the idea of developing a transfer program in which my students who had welding, machine tools, robotics, etc. would graduate with a two-year technical degree and then transfer to the university and earn their bachelor's degree in technical education.  

In my opinion, this is the best way of creating competent teachers who will have the hands-on skills that the community college provides.

Ideally, having a teacher who has industry expertise would be a great asset to the classroom. However, these individuals are hard to find. Who wants to leave their 401K and earn a third of the amount they were making in industry for a profession that is underappreciated?

It took my state several years to approve the tech-ed program after it was first denied. Their logic was that a community college didn't have enough depth of knowledge in our classes and the state lacked oversight of the curriculum. I pointed out that there probably wasn't a person in their government building that would know a good weld from a bad one, and we had an advisory board to give us relevant feedback. Still, we had to table the idea until some pressure from outside groups and another community college submitting the same proposal brought its approval. 

Industry’s Role in Tech-Ed

To improve our skilled workforce, we have to think outside the box on how we certify teachers and fund programs. We need to create seamless, affordable pathways for these graduates to become teachers. Teachers are getting paid in crumbs, so why put them further in debt? Industry can step in, provide professional development as needed and assist local  technical instructors by serving on a advisory committee. A teacher with a math background may not know how to properly align a table saw rip fence. Through these partnerships, industry can help shape that classroom and what that teacher teaches.

In regards to program funding, you might be surprised to learn that woodshop class is not considered career and technical education by our state or the federally funded Perkins program. This means that even if a school wanted to start a woodshop program, those funds would need to come from industry donors, grants and school coffers. I accepted a job (and pay cut) to work at my daughter’s school as their new shop teacher four years ago. I have created enough partnerships in my rural community that we are flush with wood. I have been updating equipment through grantwriting and taken more woodworking classes to up my skills. But to be clear, not all schools have the same community support. This is where IndustryWeek readers can pitch in.

It will take pressure from outside groups for state leaders to examine their policies inhibiting technical education. Politicians don’t like learning about policy; they want to cut ribbons on new buildings. It doesn't matter how many buildings and machines you provide. If you don't have the right person in that building, the program will fail. You must be the squeaky wheel for teachers.

Your companies pay the taxes that keep schools open. You have to take an active role and be on school advisory boards to ensure these programs are kept up to date. I could easily write another article on establishing advisory boards and how to support new teachers, but for now, I hope to generate conversations that you can have with your peers to help propel technical education in your state.