Engineering "Educator" Degree Programs

[jpetito]

Hi Ed--

A number of things come up with this:

Engineers are not necessarily what you need; someone well-versed in the trades and business who can teach basic skills, building a foundation of muscle-memory with materials and mechanisms and tools and equipment. Then this person can point the way to higher education in it, or in related fields.

Who wants to come out of industry, take a forty or fifty percent discount in pay, go after the teaching credential, and then shuffle through all the Common Core and NGSS BS we're made to do? There's this vision out there on the part of school site administrators to get some old retired engineers to come into the school system and teach these classes. Really? Put up with school site and school district politics, fight for funding, fight for a legitimate place on the schedule, fight for your class description to get legitimized by the state? Write the curriculum for your state, mostly from scratch?

Wrote a book on this whole issue: here's a free one to anyone who can see this message: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/448735 On checkout, put in this code to download it for free in any format: MF57X

See two chapters specifically: The Shop Teacher, and Accomplishment, about how FRC fills the skills gap for young people, and why so many business step up to fund it and give scholarships, and so many more volunteer to make it all work.

A blessing on your efforts!