For most teens, high school is viewed as an obstacle before adulthood, where boring teachers give boring assignments about boring topics. But what is high school like when students take classes that will help them achieve a certification or training in their future career?
I am one of those students. Starting from my junior year, the class focused on the science of welding, along with hands-on experience with welding itself. Junior year was a lot about math, learning about fractions, decimals, and different formulas. This would help me when it was applied to learning blueprints, and all of the welding symbols to go with it.
With as much math as we did, we also got to get experience learning about the machines. Some Days we would go up one by one, taking a welder apart, and putting it back together again. Every other day was welding time, so we would spend all day getting used to each welding process, and how they were each different (MIG, TIG, STICK, dual shield, and flux core). This is where I would find the process I liked the most, and can focus on it. We would also learn how to use grinders, plasma cutters, and oxy-fuel torches. With this skill, we would need to cut metal, along with learning how to properly clean our surfaces. Sheers and iron workers were also new to us, and were also used to cutting out metal.
By senior year, these skills would already be known, which is why I chose to do work-based learning. This is where I would get experience at a job site, instead of going to school on Tuesday through Friday. Here, I would learn how to become good at TIG welding, which I would choose as my preferred welding process, because of how clean it is. I would also learn how to use different bandsaws (Vertical/horizontal), Hydraulic presses, CNC machines, CNC lathes, and drill mills. Each of these machines would drastically improve my skills not just in welding, but in metal fabrication as a whole.
Thanks to work-based learning, I now have a full-time job straight out of high school, doing what I enjoy, while continuing to apply the skills I learned at William D Ford as a whole. Taking the welding class at William D Ford was one of the best decisions I could have made as a high school student, as it helped me to forge a path for my future career.
