Here’s the plan: Bring 500 Grade 8 kids into the various and well-equipped trades/technology spaces in a high school, get them stoked about tech and give them a glimpse of what high school is like. In the process, you relieve some of their general anxiety about high school, and get them interested in the trades.
That’s about the size of the plan behind the Upper Grand District School Board’s Technology Days event. The thirteenth annual edition was held at John F. Ross Collegiate Vocational Institute on Friday, and will be repeated next Thursday. About 250 students visited on Friday.
Grade-eighters from John F. Ross feeder schools in Guelph, Rockwood and Eramosa got hands-on (and hands-dirty) experience in most everything tech/trades related offered by the high school, including a touch of welding, woodworking, automotive repair, aesthetics, graphic design, and media arts. The school’s tech teachers ran the show.
The hallways in the extensive, well-equipped tech area of the high school welcomed a steady parade of kids, going from one large-scale workshop to the next. It was the first exposure most of them had to skills like drilling a hole in a square of plexiglass on a drill-press, or wrenching on a small engine.
The drill-press thing was accurately a big thrill for kids like Thomas Caulfield, 13.
“It was really fun,” said the boy, who was proud of his accomplishment. “Mostly, I like playing at sports, but I might change my whole direction into trades. It sounds like it will be a lot of fun here at Ross.”
The impact the day was having on Caulfield is the general impact school officials would like it to have on all the Grade 8 students.
“We’re hoping to get them to take a tech course in high school,” said Trent Bewick, tech head at Ross. “Some will grab on, some won’t, but this a great event to get them interested.”
Bewick said the elementary students don’t know what high school is like, and the event gives them a positive glimpse at it.
“There are a lot of career opportunities in the trades,” he said. “They are just crying for people to get into the skilled trades, and there are openings all over the place. We are trying to do anything we can to get the kids to think about a career in the skilled trades.”
Sandra Detmar is a tech design instructor at the high school. Exposure to trade-related skills is not common at the elementary level, she said, so Technology Day usually offers kids a first try.
“They try things out and think, ‘I could actually do this.’ The emphasis here is to learn by doing,” Detmar said.
Both Detmar and Bewick said there is a push on to get more female students involved in the trades. They are very much under-represented, especially in the manufacturing sector.
“We need women in these careers,” Detwar added. “They have fine motor skills and are well suited for the work.”
Communications tech instructor Blake Martin welcomed students into an area of the high school with professional level video and photography equipment, and where there was much to explore in the field of graphic design, media arts, and advertising.
“It’s partly about promoting the tech and getting them interested in it,” he said. “But it’s also about transitioning the kids into high school. They’re doing something fun, and they don’t feel so intimidated by high school.”
