Talking Shop

Technology almost killed the venerable shop class--until technology turned around and rescued it.

Middle schools across Los Angeles are converting classrooms that taught generations of youngsters the basics of old-fashioned electronics, printing, metalworking and woodworking into high-tech science centers geared to the vocations of the future.

That is creating waiting lists of pupils eager to experiment with things like aeronautics, robotics, wind tunnels, computer animation, satellite technology and solar energy.

Old-style shop classes seemed on the way to extinction in the 1980s. That’s when financial problems and changing curricula forced school administrators throughout the state to begin rethinking the value of introductory-level vocational training.

Some shop classes were dropped because of budget cutbacks. Others folded because of falling enrollment as students filled their class schedules with academics that they felt would better prepare them for college.

The fact that computers and other technical advances made shop classes seem quaint and old-fashioned to teenagers did not help.

“Shop classes were slowly fading away,” said Mardon Connelly, who for three decades has taught shop at Bancroft Middle School in Hollywood. “As they added more required subjects, they took electives away. When the older shop teacher retired, they didn’t replace him.”

Four years ago, Connelly’s electronics shop class landed on the cutback list.

“They were about to do away with it. I brought the vice principal up and said, ‘Hey, this is science I’m teaching.’ She agreed.”

Connelly proposed doing what a colleague 15 miles away had done: upgrading his electronics shop class into a state-of-the-art center that would give pupils hands-on experience with more than a dozen flashy--and fun--areas of science.

San Fernando Middle School electronics teacher David Nagel had converted his shop class into a technology lab three years earlier, wrangling a $600 grant from his principal and sinking $4,000 of his own money into used computers and science equipment.

Nagel’s lab was such a hit with students who had never before shown any interest in science that officials approved the concept for other schools. Los Angeles Unified School District administrators found an unusual way to help pay for it too: the National Guard.

The National Guard was preparing for military downsizing at the time, so it offered to help finance new labs in exchange for the opportunity to place Guard troops in the classrooms as assistants. Military officials figured that would help prepare officers for new careers as teachers.

Initially, seven middle-school technology labs were opened. This year, the number has grown to 32. Bancroft’s center is one of the newest.

Connelly spent two years building it, using his own engineering skills to design its 16 workstations. Then he used Bancroft’s idle wood shop equipment to fabricate new desks and cabinets for each station.

To give the revamped electronics shop a more modern feel, Connelly carpeted the floor and its walls and placed a mural of the space shuttle near the front door. Local stores donated paint and window blinds, and the Hollywood Beautification Committee helped repaint the room, he said.

Not that the classroom didn’t have a distinctive look once he installed its $180,000 worth of computers, video equipment and engineering test gear bought last year with a school district grant.

These days, the 28 pupils in each of his four classes divide themselves into pairs and spend 2 1/2 weeks at each workstation. There’s a waiting list of pupils who are eager to get into the yearlong course.

Class last week was a no-nonsense affair and there were no empty seats as youngsters intently worked on biotechnology, computer graphics, digital music, environmental technology, lasers and plastics projects.

Ed Vides, 13, was finishing his stint at the research and development desk, putting the final touches on a carbon dioxide cartridge-powered wooden race car he designed to be aerodynamically correct.

Across the room, Luis Rodriguez and partner Richard Squire, both 13, were working on a robot. “I’m learning to do things I never imagined I could do,” said Luis.

Jacky Melendez, 13, explained how she designed and built a cardboard rocket and then used compressed air to propel it several hundred yards across the Bancroft playground.

The rocket launcher was built by Nagel, who has also built wind tunnels, magnetic levitation tracks and a space shuttle simulator for his San Fernando lab. The curriculum that Nagel devised is now used in about 800 junior high schools across the country.

“The technology touches the old career paths we used to call shop,” said Nagel, 48, a Santa Clarita resident who has taught at San Fernando for 24 years. “It picks up the fundamentals of a lot of the old shop classes and enhances them.”

Connelly, 57, of North Hollywood, agrees. But he still misses the old days.

“It tears me up to see what has happened to shop classes. They tore out our print shop to convert it into math and history classes. The wood shop is a science class, although I’ve talked them into keeping the equipment so we can use it for our lab. Metal shop is still here, but drafting is a dance room now.”

The complexity of the lab and the confusion that can accompany 28 students working simultaneously on 14 projects requires Connelly to have an assistant, National Guard reservist Stephen Smith. Materials for the projects cost about $3,000 a year.

Those kinds of costs make Connelly--who plans to retire in 2001--worry that the technology labs could someday end up on cutback lists of their own.

If that happens, he hopes his successor shops around for ways to save it.