Class3 reflection, TED601--
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6688994/Industrial-arts-technolo...
According to this article there are only 3 cal state programs that offer IA teaching credentials. When you add NU to the mix, thats 4, and NU's can barely be considered an Industrial Arts program! We are losing IA teachers and have barely any means of replacing them. This is double trouble because this means shops are closing because of lack of interest, teachers replacing the old ones, and cut off funding.

The argument to focus on not only keeping IA programs open, but growing them seems the only answer to our societies atrophied trades and skills sector. We are not a healthy society if we do not have a good balance of people who can design and build things with their hands. In my opinion, the days of China making everything for us are coming to a close. My simple understanding of economics is that if China is growing their middle class in the SEZs that can afford to purchase all the stuff they have normally been sending to the US, and the US is currently out of order in that regard, China will simply domesticate consumption. Even if this isn't the case, does it really make sense to carry a gigantic trade deficit while we know that we are building-skills poor while we now watch even our knowledge workers being"out-sourced" to Asia. What do we have left other than the high powered elite. It is in our societies' best interest to turn to ourselves and start relearning and salvaging the knowledge and skills that are quickly disappearing with the older generation.
This all stems from a repetition of thoughts about the credentialing process for Industrial Arts teachers as I take my second class at NU. There is a strong disconnect with the shop I will be running and maintaining and the academic focus of this credential program. And I really don't have any other choice other than applying to and attending an IA program in LA. It is a miracle that I can actually receive my IA credential here at NU and I am grateful for this opportunity, but the future of my field is beginning to be suspect for me.
Learning to teach academics is very much a theoretical and abstract realm. Often times Academics is criticized as being disconnected from practice and the 'real world'. I won't go this far. But where it does differ hugely from industrial arts is that I will be dealing with running machines and producing physical products. My shop will be supporting all the major academic areas; Math, reading, and even history. This mode of teaching is fundamentally different and I believe deserves a separate approach to teaching teachers.
Yes, I will have to complete student teaching or an internship before I am fully credentialed. But the meager opportunity to be in a shop in this capacity is barely adequate to gain practical experience. I am fortunate enough to have the time to be mentored in a shop every week, have personal experience in my own shop, while also having the time and resources to undertake the enormous task of getting credentialed as a teacher. This begs the question, "how do we adequately prepare more IA teachers to replace the few we have, while avoiding a complete lose of these arts in our education system?"
We need to re-prioritize the industrial arts as essential, and even a foundation, to supporting the academic standards in school. A new system should include training students to teach from experience much further up the path to education and open tracked progress as a potential teaching career path much sooner. This would bring the education of more IA teachers right into the classroom. Thiss might sound preposterous to think of career paths in middle school, but it isn't so hard to see.
I have experienced this in two shop classes already, but only informally. Returning shop students are not only expected, but have the privilege to teach new students their prior knowledge through exhibiting their skills. It is a "badge" of accomplishment and a source of a very powerful infusion of self-confidence, as well as a practical deployment of an "all hands on deck" management of a large shop. This simple example exhibits a very important condition of the shop environment that lends itself to master/apprentice style of teaching/learning.
Looking at it a little closer, it also exhibits a very powerful measure of successful outcomes. If a student masters a project, lets say cutting and shaping a copy of a template for a candy dish by hand, that student exhibits that he/she can listen to and relay directions(CALP/BICS), use measurement to choose an appropriate piece of wood, and show mastery of tools and understanding of how those tools effect the materials. What happens next is something that happens very rarely, if at all, in a standard academic classroom. The student solidifies and justifies his knowledge and skill by repeating and passing it on to another eager student.
Taking this approach and applying it to the teaching of IA teachers in general is where healing the problem lies. This might not be the answer for teaching all subject teachers, but it certainly makes sense for the Industrial Arts, and actually might be the only way we achieve a shift in society towards salvaging a the dying arts. By focusing on the mode of training teachers for Industrial Arts through an Educational Non-profit business model, we might be able to escape the traps of approaching it as a curriculum problem layered under our lumbering beauracracy.