Teachers close books for hands-on lessons

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- As the whirring of the saw slows, Candyce Giesler steps back to survey her work. The end of the 1-by-2-foot slat of wood is slightly splintered and choppy, perhaps not quite cut at the angle she wanted.

If this were her student's work, the Perryville High School math teacher would not likely be handing out an A, but the effort alone is giving Giesler innovative ideas to take back to her classroom next school year.

"I've learned I can be just as aggravating as my students are, because I want somebody to show me how to do this, I don't want to have to think," said Giesler. She is one of around 30 junior high and high school teachers from throughout Southeast Missouri who traded chalk and textbooks for welding equipment and jigsaws this week as part of a workshop at Perryville Area Career & Technology Center.

The teachers, whose subject areas include science, communication arts and special education, chose from mini-vocational courses in automobile collision repair, graphics/printing, welding and construction technology.

The intent of the workshop, which was funded through Mineral Area College in Park Hills, Mo., the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and technical schools from throughout the region, is to show regular classroom teachers how the theories they teach are actually applied in vocational education.

"When most people think of technology, they think of computers. But there's all kinds of technology students need to know about," said Dave Toney, director of the Perryville center. "If we can show these folks what's happening in vocational education, it will expand on what they teach kids every day."

This is the first year for the program, known as the Technical Prep Internship. Vocational instructors from career centers in Cape Girardeau, Perryville, Bonne Terre and Arcadia are teaching the four courses. Participants choose two of those courses to take during the weeklong program. They also work on take-home projects in each course and then develop lesson plans around those projects.

In the internship's printmaking course, teachers made their own business cards and printed T-shirts.

"Most of time, these people just read out of books, they don't actually do these things," said Bill Ernst, one of the vocational instructors teaching the course. "We're trying to get them to try hands-on."

In the welding course, special education teacher Janice Hecht welded a birdbath from sheet metal and farm machinery parts.

It was the Perryville High School teacher's first time to weld, but she immediately developed ideas for how to use the experience in her classroom, including applying circumference and diameter lessons to it.

"A lot of students who aren't creative can do these hands-on things when you show them the reality of it," Hecht said. "I wish they'd offered this sooner."

cclark@semissourian.com

335-6611, ext. 128