My Classroom

[bigbramble]

I thought this may be of interest to some of you. I used to run a garage in Poole and that I am now a teacher. The other day I took some pics on my iphone of my classroom which is 100% set up by me. I teach 11-16 year olds at a secondary school in Southampton, a member of the DT department teaching about motor vehicles.

 

Its very cool we do engine rebuilds, build petrol radio controlled cars and go-karts and we have a separate workshop with a ramp and a few cars to work on. Personally I think its awesome that we can do this kind of thing in school these days. Wish I could have!

 

Ant.

 

 

 

 

[introspect]

That looks really cool! Wish I could have done that at school, all we did was bloody woodwork

[LRF4N]

i know we had crappy subjects at school never had anything like that

 

im sure some of the teachers are jealous as well

[Ebized]

Nearest I had was metalwork and woodwork rooms - and a lot of stick from teachers when I rolled up for scholl on a Lambretta TV175 as they got off the bus in 1965

[Vik54]

Excellent way of engaging young people

I've currently got a group going to Knockhill once a week to work alongside the techies in the rally workshops - these are young people who have had extremely poor attendance and behaviour in the classroom and left school with no positive destination- but you should see them pay attention and behave in a different environment

[Husky]

ok ok ok show off

 

what kind of school does this? im going back to school! i work with cars daily and my workshop doesnt look as fun as that

[ATTAK Z]

The new government is thinking of reintroducing "Technical Schools" as per the 1950s .... a good idea IMO .... more vocational training

 

It looks like you've made good use of some old resources in your classroom ....... very well done

[maz0]

Im so jealous of those kids! I'd love that now, never mind when I was a kid!

[SwanageDave]

I am a site manager in swanage middle school, just a thought have you been in touch with Cterham cars ? they will supply schools with a full kit to build a caterham and you get to keep it a year and then sell it on and that funds the next kit for you.

[IanS16]

WOW

 

I only left School about 8 years ago and I never had any classes like this!! I'm really jealous actually, I was wasting my time with crappy 'filler' lessons inbetween the standard maths, english etc when I could have been doing something I actually wanted to learn about and would pay attention to

[rtbiscuit]

I am a Secondary Tech Teacher and i am jealous would love to teach this kind of stuff in my school but it would never happen in a million years. already have plans in my head of moving the entire SEN department out of their area and converting the space into 2 mech workshops. i jokingly mentioned it to my head of faculty and he was not impressed. its the disadvantage of working in a high achieving school. Technology is not a priority and no way the funding would be there. we send some of our kids to the local college where they do this kind of stuff.

 

the issue is its not in the curriculum so won;t get taught. the reason some of our kids do car maintance at otley college is they can;t cope with GCSE's so this is used to fill their timetable.

 

at my last school i managed to secure funding to enter the formula school project and had 8 kids who i taught after school and we built and raced a nitro car from scratch. we built our oun chassis, exhaust and steering system. designed and manufactured a body shell and then entered. Came 15th out of 55 schools and picked up several trophies for best rookie aerodynamics and best rookie placing. we would have come higher but we had issues with the braking system; i told them to leave it off but they didn't and they spent half their first race dismantling the car after it jammed.

 

in the school before that i had a lot more freedom and a head of faculty who shared similiar hobbies. there we built 3 different green power cars (single seater electric race cars) and also entered the honda challenge (build an eco car to run the furthest on 1 litre of fuel)

 

also done a little with the jaguar challenge but that was mainly done by another teacher i just helped out occasionally.

 

the thing is my schools focus is GCSE results, they come first, and sadly all my time is taken up with pushing kids to get the best results.

 

the idea of technical schools sounds very good to me and something i shall be watching closely. and might even see a change of schools if things look promising.

[bigbramble]

Excellent way of engaging young people

I've currently got a group going to Knockhill once a week to work alongside the techies in the rally workshops - these are young people who have had extremely poor attendance and behaviour in the classroom and left school with no positive destination- but you should see them pay attention and behave in a different environment

 

Yes definitely it really makes the difference with kids that just cant get engaged with the normal curriculum. A lot of my students are excluded or close to being excluded.

[bigbramble]

ok ok ok show off

 

what kind of school does this? im going back to school! i work with cars daily and my workshop doesnt look as fun as that

 

Hehe I will take another pic when I get all the gear in there. It is quite fun but very challenging and tiring. Believe it or not I will probably be doing classes for adults as we do some adult education too.

[bigbramble]

I am a site manager in swanage middle school, just a thought have you been in touch with Cterham cars ? they will supply schools with a full kit to build a caterham and you get to keep it a year and then sell it on and that funds the next kit for you.

 

Wow really? hmmmm.....

[geoff-r]

That looks amazing, teach the kids something they might actually enjoy

[Wasso]

I am actually 12 years old - can I come to school please sir? This is sooooooo unfair! There was hardly anything interesting at school, now THAT would have been wicked. Kids are lucky with their education these days. Rebuilding engines and I had the pleasure of making short bread. I've neve cooked it since leaving school and cookery taught me nothing as I'm still a useless cook. The only thing I enjoyed was maybe and PE.

 

Maybe you could get the kids to forge my engine for me?

[rtbiscuit]

I am actually 12 years old - can I come to school please sir? This is sooooooo unfair! There was hardly anything interesting at school, now THAT would have been wicked. Kids are lucky with their education these days. Rebuilding engines and I had the pleasure of making short bread. I've neve cooked it since leaving school and cookery taught me nothing as I'm still a useless cook. The only thing I enjoyed was maybe and PE.

 

Maybe you could get the kids to forge my engine for me?

 

only way you would have got to do that kind of stuff is if you were not capabable of passing normal GCSE's, most of the kids we send are SEN low ability or have behavioural issues.

 

i don't agree with the system but thats how it is. i think the idea of technical schools is a great idea. my biggest problem is not getting high ability students and only having all the low ability funnelled into my class. i like teaching them. but i'd love to do so much more.

 

ramble. nice work