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Firestone High School students compete in homemade boats of cardboard, aluminum foil
By John Higgins
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Thursday, May 21, 2009
Seventeen canoes made of either cardboard and duct tape or aluminum foil stretched over bendable wood ribs held fast with twine and glue went into the water Wednesday.
Eleven made it to the finish line in the fourth annual race at the Firestone High School pool in Akron.
The popular event drew the usual crowd of parents taking time off from work and classmates cheering on competitors.
''It quickly went from just being a lesson on buoyancy, displacement and center of gravity and a design problem to one of the most popular things that I do,'' said Dan Spak, who teaches the pre-engineering program at Firestone.
It's also a prime example of how vocational education has changed over the decades from the traditional shop classes once offered as an alternative for students who weren't expected to go to college.
For one thing, it's now called career and technical education (CTE). A representative from the national Association for Career and Technical Education was in Akron on Tuesday with local educators hoping to change public perceptions.
''We think that a lot of people think it's CTE or you go to college, it's not both,'' said Sabrina Kidwai. ''I have people from cities in New York, other cities, that have this perception that CTE [students] are not the college-type of kids; they're the 'other' kids.''
Spak teaches a four-year series of courses at Firestone offered as electives through the national program Project Lead the Way.
The nonprofit organization aims to improve science and engineering instruction through hands-on learning to better prepare high school students for college.
Garfield High School also offers Project Lead the Way pre-engineering courses, and North High School recently started a new biomedical technology program. Litchfield Middle School has an introductory course in eighth grade.
Allison Latham, a junior in the Project Lead the Way program at Firestone, is definitely headed for college, though she hasn't decided which one.
She and fellow junior James Ray and senior Stephen Freitag designed the fastest aluminum-foil canoe on the water Wednesday, completing the pool's open figure-eight course in 1:06.
Latham will spend her summer as an intern at the University of Akron on a project examining how to make materials resistant to corrosion.
''I want to be a chemical engineer,'' Latham said. ''I just know that I really like chemistry and I really like engineering and I don't want to be a doctor or a lawyer.''
Ellet senior Peter Strawman, who has studied in the construction management program at the high school since he was a sophomore, plans to get a four-year degree in construction management at the University of Cincinnati.
''Last year, junior year, we made our prom decorations [and] we made ramps for the schools,'' Strawman said. ''As a senior, we go out and we build a house for our community, from the foundation up. We built a house over on Eastland Avenue by Case [Avenue]. We just had the open house for it two weeks ago.''
Strawman is not sure he wants to own a construction company right away; he's more interested in becoming a safety code inspector.
''I just liked walking around our house looking at everything, looking at how it was done,'' he said. ''You know what's behind the walls, you know how it really works, what makes it tick.''
Latham and Strawman are aiming for four-year degrees. Others are preparing for two-year programs, initial licenses or certifications that are less costly to obtain.
Such training also may prove more valuable, giving them a competitive edge in a tight economy that cannot guarantee a job for every graduate with a four-year college degree.
The latest Chronicle of Higher Education includes a commentary about rising college tuition and shrinking resources to pay. It is headlined ''Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?''
Howard Lawson, director of career education for Akron Public Schools, thinks so.
Although universities are turning out more and more graduates with four-year degrees, the percentage of jobs in the economy requiring such a degree — 20 to 25 percent depending on who's counting — hasn't changed in decades, Lawson said.
''I really think it is the next big bubble to burst,'' he said. ''If you look at four-year college degree requirements in 1950 and then compare the number of jobs that require four-year college degrees today, you're going to see that that's not increased. It's relatively flat.''
And only 20 percent of those who do get four-year degrees work in a career directly related to their education, Lawson said.
''So really what we have to do is turn the educational wheel upside down,'' Lawson said. ''We need to be sending more kids to associate degree-type programs for additional training beyond high school, because that's where the jobs are. And then from that group, they naturally move into a four-year baccalaureate degree or beyond.
''In the state of Ohio, the majority of our people work in small businesses of less than 10. How many baccalaureate-degreed people can you carry or master's-degree people can you carry in that environment?''
The more real-world skills and college credits students can get under their belts in high school, the more competitive they'll be, said Scott Rader, director of the Four Cities Educational Compact that serves students in Barberton, Norton, Copley and Wadsworth.
''We have no desire to teach kids how to get into entry-level, just minimum-wage type jobs,'' Rader said. ''At one point, as I understand it, there was a leather-type of program years ago where kids trained to become cobblers. We don't need to have a leather program anymore.''
Better-paying jobs will require some form of secondary education, which is where career and technical education can give students an inexpensive leg up while they're still in high school.
''Career tech is no longer an alternative to college, it's an alternative pathway to college,'' Rader said.
John Higgins can be reached at 330-996-3792 or jhiggins@thebeaconjournal.com.
Seventeen canoes made of either cardboard and duct tape or aluminum foil stretched over bendable wood ribs held fast with twine and glue went into the water Wednesday.
Get the full article here.
Comments
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Stow, OH
Posted 09:37 PM, 05/21/2009
This looks likes like a fun project and one that reuqired students to apply knowledge, solve problems, and use their wits. I note with regret that the photographs imply that the program's students are not representative of the student body. I hope APS is not going to accept a sort of bipolar school on Rampart: "The Firestone High School Campus for the International Baccalaureate and Visual and Performing Arts" on one hand and, on the other, "the Stone".
