'Real world' enters the high school

Students get hands-on experience while sometimes helping the community.
WARREN - At Harding High School, the focus today is on teaching students about the real world.
Shop classes have always taught about using real world tools such as hammers and saws, but there was never much of an attempt to integrate academic classes such as math and science with their shop-class counterparts until recent years, said Bill Mullane, Harding principal.
Today, shop classes are "geared much more ward academic core classes and not so much toward vocational classes," Mullane said. And they help students apply the information they learned in their core classes in practical areas.
For instance, pupils 10 years ago might have taken a course in Microsoft Word. Today, the student would learn the software but also be given an assignment to carry out, as if the pupil were an employee and the teacher his client.
This approach gives pupils the kind of skills they can use in the business and industrial worlds, Mullane said. It also produces an interaction between the pupils and the communty that is positive, he said.
In some cases, the pupils actually do work for people outside of the school and make products used in the community, such as architectual drawings or television programs aired on the school's television station.
9th grade
Harding starts out its technology classes in the ninth grade with the Industrial Tech Lab and Shop, a class that introduces pupils to the technology class offerings at Harding and the offerings at the Trumbull Career and Technical Center, which the student can attend during his junior and senior years.
The Industrial Tech Lab and Shop introduces pupils to digital photography, video production, computer aided design, aerodynamics, robotics and automation, basic electricity, construction technology and materials and processes. For the second part of the year, the pupil uses a wood and metal shop to work with tools.
Those who want to study technology at the high school can do with with elective courses in engineering, architectural drawing or computer graphics.