I guess it's time for me to stop lurking and to introduce myself and start taking a more active role in the community. My name is Josiah Stinson and I'm a carpentry instructor at my county's high school career and technical center. I teach woodworking and home building but I'm a fairly new woodturner. I started turning to create tenons for my stool legs and then got sucked into making bowls and mallets because my students wanted to learn how to do them. I'm looking at adding a couple of lathes to our program and possibly create a club for woodturning.
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Josiah Stinson
- Thread starter Josiah Stinson
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Great stuff Josiah, where live they are doing the opposite, getting rid of carpentry, craft etc
Howdy and welcome from Texas! Glad to hear of a thriving Industrial Arts program. They are disappearing pretty fast here. Budget cuts and politics.
Welcome, glad to hear your students are willing to learn. We have the same thing here, county vo-tech for crafts nothing at high school like we used to have shop class.
This county has some sort of "shop class" (they call it Technology Education) at all 5 high schools. I started there and then switched to the Tech Center. We just got $425k from the school board to update and improve some programs so we're very fortunate, like you said, not all school districts think the same as us. We're even looking at expanding the building, we've had a record amount of applicants this year. I'm fortunate that our principal is always looking for us to improve our program and I want to take advantage of it and add a club and some equipment.
Thanks for growing the turning community, Josiah!
So far 3 students are interested and one already had a lathe and is making pens. Let's see what I can get started this year.
Welcome to the forum. Our club has began helping teachers at two schools in our county and hope to be able to expand the program. Would love to see pictures of your work and the students. You Might want to see if a local club would be interested in helping and maybe even give the students a free membership as we do.
Unfortunately the closest club is 45 min away but I'm thinking of getting a few of the local turners to create something for them. One has already made an offer to a student to visit and learn and I might just start using that as the beginning of an unofficial club. We'll see.
That's awesome that your local club has stepped up like that.
And that is absolutely wonderful that you're teaching the art of woodturning if it wasn't for a teacher of mine back in junior high school, in a woodshop class where I first learned the magic of turning wood into a finished beautiful bowl that I still have to this day. Best of luck to you.
Howdy from Chattanooga, TN! Welcome to the forum. I’d be interested if you did some periodic showcasing of your students’ work. With their approval, of course.
So many older people talk about their shop teachers so I try to be that positive energy in their life. I work hard at not being the "grumpy, old shop teacher" although I couple might remember me as such... haha. Hopefully it's very few.
I have an Instagram where I showcase my students and my work on it. If it's okay with AAW I'll be glad to share it. I don't post their faces so my principal is okay with it.
One thing I learned about teaching others it honed my skills, for the many questions that were asked of me forced me to learn something new.
Don’t let 45 min stop you from getting to know people in that club (my club is an hour away). They may well have members much closer to you. Call them up to see if you can attend a mtg - non-members can attend our monthly mtgs and weekly clubhouse open sessions, they just cant operate any equipment. There may be a lot you can learn from them, and dont be surprised of some of the members are willing to help you out.
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I know a couple of members in my area already and even then, it's difficult getting together with them. I teach woodworking to a homeschool group a couple afternoons a week plus have 3 teenagers in the house. We're a busy family. It's hard taking that much time off. Thanks for the encouragement though.