Ray - Middletown, in
First day in the instructor gave us the assignments for the semester and defined the time line for finishing the projects. We had 3 hours of pattern-making a day that year which was the norm for that time. We had our choice of pattern-making, machining, auto body, auto repair, drafting, electricity, and probably a couple of other I have forgotten about. Well that first day I raised my hand and asked if it would be ok to do some of the work at home and he answered "If you think you can, go ahead". The following Monday I turned in all of the projects for the semester and promptly got thrown out of class. He was sure my dad or someone else had done all the work, unbeknownst to him I had grown up in a pattern shop. My dad was a toolmaker by day and patternmaker by night and I had gone to the shop with him since I was old enough to walk. Over the years the patternmakers had shown me one thing and another and by the time I got to patternmaking class I have been making simple patterns for quite a while. The Dean of boys called the shop to get confirmation and I had to go get a letter from him to take back to the shop teacher before I was allowed back in. For being such a smarta## he made up a whole new list of patterns for me to complete during the semester. Unbeknownst to me he was originally a patternmaker by trade and he proceeded to give me some of the gnarliest stuff I had ever seen. I probably learned more that semester than I had in all the years previous after our relationship was repaired.

I'm not sure that shop belongs in school any more. I was part of a group of working people back during the 90's to act as an advisory committee to guide the local high schools. Extremely frustrating on many levels and I finally came to the conclusion that public high school is not the place for shop any more. At least in my area, I hope others find a different atmosphere.

Ray