Well I started my first day last Wednesday a three hour class. The instructor made us read out loud which was no big deal at all. I was shocked and surprised at how many people had trouble reading it was pretty bad. All in all, it's going to be a long road for me hehe.

If you don't mind, what exactly are the details of the course you're taking?

I was an Apprenticeship Instructor for ABCI for 6 years. Your post jogged some funny memories for me, as making the class read aloud was usually a tactic used when a teacher didn't feel like actively teaching that day, and was just filling time.

[This message has been edited by MONOLITH (edited 09-11-2004).]

I'm going to a school called Associates builders and contractors. Basically a four year deal I have to complete.

Electrical 1:

Electrical safety (12.5 Hours)
Hand Bending (7.5 Hours)
Fasteners and Anchors (5 Hours)
Electrical Theory One (7.5 Hours)
Electrical Theory Two (7.5 Hours)
Electrical Test Equipment (7.5)
Introduction to the NEC (2.5)
Raceways, Boxes and Fittings (12.5)
Conductors (15)
Introduction to Electrical Blueprints ( 7.5)
Wiring: Commercial and Industrial (15)
Wiring: Residential (15)

Yep. ABCI = Associated Builders and Contractors.

I taught for them in Florida. I taught 1st and 2nd year. The very class you're taking.

Are you using the "wheels of learning" books?

Wow, I taught for them in Indianapolis for eight years. I was so disappointed with the text "Wheels of Learning" and the level of understanding of the NEC that I had the students leave their Wheels of Learning home for the entire first semester and we studied the NEC. After that, we picked up the Wheels of Learning and the NEC together and we covered the entire book during the second semester.

I had complaints from several sources, one said I was teaching too much residential stuff, another said I was teaching too much commercial and industrial stuff, and yet another was complaining that I was teaching his future competition. I was told that I was about to lose my job until all the complaints landed in the same place. After comparing the complaints, they decided I was doing OK.

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Charlie Eldridge, Indianapolis, Utility Power Guy

I hated the wheels of learning.

2nd year has this brutally long and boring section on various motor types.

Try getting a bunch of young kids, who worked all day, who can't wait to get home to their girlfriends, to sit thru a detailed explanation of the inner workings of a squirrel cage motor at 8pm.

I didn't know who would shoot me first, them, or myself.

I often disregarded the books altogether, and tried to give them more practical field teachings relevant to what they were doing at the time.

I really felt that any apprenticeship should have included a year on how to become a foreman...ie: how to build a job, run a crew, etc. Real practical, real world stuff.

That seems to be lacking from every apprenticeship curriculum I have seen.

[This message has been edited by MONOLITH (edited 09-11-2004).]

ABC is a top-shelf program. Charlie, did you teach at Gaylor U?

"ABC is a top-shelf program"

Agreed. No argument here.

It's just the particular course books that could use a little tweaking, and those are not written by ABC.

Honestly, I have no doubts that ABC instructors, if motivated to come up with their own curriculum, could produce excellent course material that would be more up to date, practically relevant, and more interesting to the students, as opposed to relying on teachers to try to accomplish the same with lesser materials.



[This message has been edited by MONOLITH (edited 09-11-2004).]

I'm looking at the book right now and it's called CONTREN learning series. The nccer trainee guide. I wish the instructors were a little more lenient on tardies. Some of us live about an hour away unlike them who probably live 15 minutes away lol. I hate traffic but it's reality and if there's an accident I'm screwed. Not to mention driving in snowy conditions, plus we have a job too lol.

Fred, I taught a lot of Gaylor people but never taught at Gaylor U. I helped teach a class on motors at the Gaylor facility one time and I have and am teaching for the Indiana Electric League.

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Charlie Eldridge, Indianapolis, Utility Power Guy

Monolith, I put together a lot of my own curriculum in order to keep the course current. I taught power factor correction, basic trigonometry, a bit about harmonics, transformer configurations, etc.

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Charlie Eldridge, Indianapolis, Utility Power Guy

Charlie, I did a lot of my own too. Mostly I used the wheels of learning as a basic guideline, and then supplimented it or expanded on certain chapters.

I spent extra time on things that caught their interest, like theory and ohms law, and went a little more in depth into things like blueprint reading.

Just so no one misunderstands me, I'm not trying to sound as harsh as maybe I did regarding ABC's choice of literature. But during my time teaching I was just one of many teachers who felt the same way; that the materials could be a little more palatable for the students.

In fairness, a lot does depend on the teachers style as well. The teacher has the responsibility to transform the material, thru presentation style, into something the student will look forward to engaging in.

I think that's what makes a good teacher, and it's why I'm against the old 'just make the kids read aloud' stuff.

I was guilty of that a few times, but it was always when I wasn't prepared, or wasn't in the mood to be there that night.

Regardless of the curriculum, almost any organized apprenticeship endeavor is worth the effort, and any student willing to go the extra mile to advance himself usually will.

Just stick with it Andy. It will all be worth it.

Sounds like grammar school. I hadn't had teachers do that "have the kids read aloud from the book in class" in high school and definately not college. Some of my grammar school teachers did nothing else. Other teachers in grammar school sometimes didn't really know the material and winged it. "How could an adult not know something that's taught in grammar school" you ask. Well, how many adults know the formal defination of a sentence in English grammar? My teacher said that a sentence was "A complete thought". Well, when you think about it, that doesn't really tell you anything. What makes it incomplete or complete? Well, I eventually figured out that a "complete thought" had a noun (or pronoun) and a verb in it. Which is what all sentences had in them. But the teacher probably thought that he was telling us something useful with the "complete thought" thing. The science teachers didn't know much beyond what your Aunt Tillie or my grandmother knew about electricity ("well it makes the lights go on and I gotta pay the bill every month...").

But you should have teachers that actually understand the material at that ABCI school. Ones that get evaluated on how well they teach. Sadly that doesn't happen in college, where the professors are evaluated only on how much research money they can bring into the college and how many papers they publish. Teaching a class is the last priority for them. To them it's a waste of their time, and thus they give it no effort.

I try to think in paragraphs and conceptualy, sentances are too small for most thoughts.

As far as the teacher asking the students to read out loud, it is very important. A very important aspect of teaching is to evaluate the student. By listening to and following his reading skill helps the teacher to be able to help that student in his/her needs.
I finished a class for training adults in continuing education, and there are many methods that can be used to best help all of the different learning styles that adults use to learn, but first one needs to evaluate that student.

Pierre

"As far as the teacher asking the students to read out loud, it is very important..........one needs to evaluate that student."


Respectfully, I think the 'reading aloud' technique is far more applicable to very young children, or grammar school, as someone else stated.

There's a difference between having youngsters reading aloud and having grown adults do it.

I can assure you first hand that when apprenticeship teachers had adult students
read aloud, the vast majority of time it was out of lack of desire to do anything else that particular evening, or to chew up some time from the 3 hour evening class.

Part time night teachers are humans with other day jobs, families, and a day full of other events and problems they go thru before they even get to their class at the end of an already long day. Sometimes, like anyone else working two jobs, they just aren't 'up for it' that day.

Whenever I was really on top of my game, had interesting material, and was fully prepared for class that night, I did all the talking, explaining the written material instead of just plodding thru it. I was at the board demonstrating things, and I had everyones attention, they were taking notes, interacting with me and each other, etc.

Whenever I was not prepared, or as sometimes happens, just not 'into it' that night, having the class read aloud was the fall back plan, tantamount to "I don't feel like teaching tonight".

I fully agree that revealing/learning a students strengths and weaknesses is an important part of the teacher/student relationship. I just don't believe having grown adults read aloud in front of their peers is the way to force them to expose those weaknesses in front of each other, when one on one time with the student, or thorough review of their work can better achieve that evaluation.

Of course, this is only my opinion from personal experience, and surely there are other circumstances where reading aloud may be more applicable. I just don't think a night trade apprenticeship class full of adults is one of them.



[This message has been edited by MONOLITH (edited 09-13-2004).]

back in grammar school, our class had a few kids whose' mother tounge was no English, so they would have extra trouble reading aloud. So the reading would bog down, and I'd get bored sitting thru it. I'd start reading ahead and maybe even finish the lesson on my own. Problem was that if I got called on to pick up the reading I wouldn't know where the class was. The teacher decided I was dumb in that I couldn't keep up. Actually I was dumb in that I didn't keep half an ear on where the class was in the reading. I'd end up in the poor reader's subgroup of the class. I think part of the problem was that they had too many kids in the class (about 32, that was the number that would physically fit in the classroom and not be a fire code violation).

Having to sit in a class having to listen to someone else read the book can be quite boring. Most people can read silently a lot faster than reading out loud. As an adult paying for the class, I'd be unhappy with this "waste of time".

There was this thing called "SRA" back in grammar school in the mid sixties. For reading class. It was a box full of short reading stories you read independently of the other kids (you had the only copy of that story, the other kids had other stories). And there were some question and answers on the back of the story pamphlet and you could look in the story to find the answers. A hell of a lot more interesting than sitting thru out loud reading. The teacher was avaliable for help if you needed it, otherwise she just kept the spitball fights down .

I don't see a sensable analogy of this to an adult class, unfortunately. Unless someone writes up individual stories on different sections of the NEC...