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Written by Richard McCuistian
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Sunday, 01 March 2009 |
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Note: This is an article I wrote for ACtion magazine won an international automotive media award...
What the Teacher Sees
Richard McCuistian
My Personal Odyssey I presently carry 9 ASE certifications and I teach Auto Mechanics at a technical college, and while I have spent hundreds of hours in factory schools being trained on Volkswagen, Mazda, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Jeep, and even Renault, I never went to ‘tech school’ per se. My dad opened a foreign car garage in 1961 when I was a small boy and in the intervening years, some of my fondest memories have been couched in the smell of a garage and the comforting feel of grease and steel. As a gas-pumping mechanic in the mid seventies (gas was forty cents a gallon then), I laid the foundation for a lifetime as an auto technician, and after 25 years in the field as a professional, I took the Auto Mechanics instructor position at the college where I am now employed. At this point I have been teaching Auto Mechanics for five years. Even before becoming a professional instructor, I had trained more than a few technicians over the course of my career as a professional steel-puller and spark chaser, and so I wasn’t a total stranger to the ins and outs of bringing new guys up to speed. Such endeavors aren’t for the selfish: they always call for personal sacrifice in time, energy, and resources.
It takes time and energy to explain principles, procedures and concepts. It also takes time to fix what the trainee has fouled up. It takes resources too. One of the AYES students I trained lost (by his own estimate) about $300 worth of my tools during the time he worked with me, not to mention the fact that he burned up the power transistor in my DeWalt cordless drill treating it like it was a half inch impact wrench. Technical college graduates with whom I worked in the field seemed knowledgeable enough about normal bolt twisting and simple troubleshooting, but their problem solving skills consistently appeared dreadfully lacking. If the lug nut rounded off, the new grads didn’t seem to know what to do next. If the exhaust manifold runners were warped to the point that bolt holes were slightly out of line with the threaded holes in the head, they didn’t know what to do about that either. And they were always looking to us more experienced guys for magic bullets when they got in a jam, and when there wasn’t a magic bullet, some of them would all but ask us to do the work for them.
One freshly trained tech school grad came to me for help because he had the engine almost all the way out of an Explorer when he discovered he should have removed the fan for clearance, but with the engine swinging from the engine hoist chain he had no way to hold the water pump pulley so as to break the big fan nut loose. What was so silly was that he had an air hammer in his shiny new Snap-On toolbox and had no clue when or how to use it. In my early days as a technician, I certainly didn’t always have the answers, but then, once again, I never went to tech school either. With that in mind, my launch pad for professional teaching came in part from a desire to correct the performance and knowledge deficiencies I experienced in my early years, especially since I saw many of these same deficiencies in so many of the professional techs I encountered in the field. Too many dealerships are hiring warm bodies for OJT when they really need guys with a better knowledge base than that. Right now my oldest student (35) is one of those. He has nine years of field experience (five years as a dealership technician) but he wants to expand his knowledge base and get ASE certified so as to command a better paycheck. Presently, my youngest student is a very sharp 19 year-old woman who is beginning her engineering career with a technical education. My students come from various age groups and backgrounds; some are fresh out of high school and some are fresh out of Iraq. Any automotive training program needs adequate facilities, up to date equipment, and cars that can be worked on. My department has eleven bays, six lifts, a classroom, an electronics lab, three brake lathes (one on-car), a front end machine, an array of hand tools, power tools and scan tools, a refrigerant recycler and an identifier, an exhaust recovery system and other tools too numerous to mention. Shop air is provided by two massive air compressors that pump their pressure through an elaborately expensive dryer unit the size of a home heat pump. I have ten operational trainer vehicles ranging from a 1987 Honda to a 1999 GMC, and while shop exercises are always necessary to satisfy the NATEF (National Automotive Technicians Education Foundation) task list, I take in as much pertinent live work as I can, usually about 60 or so jobs per semester. Most automotive programs in Alabama don’t do live work. My 8-person advisory committee consists of employers in the automotive service industry and former students who are working in the field. We meet twice a year so I can show them what I’m doing and get feedback on how I can do it better. The problem with students working on trainer vehicles is that since those cars and trucks will never see the highway, students don’t take trainer vehicle work seriously. They leave components out of place and usually fail to put all the bolts back, and for that reason, trainer vehicles tend to suffer over time from student-generated entropy. That’s one reason why GM-donated trainers are title-branded. Live work jobs are more satisfying, particularly because the students feel like they have done something worthwhile rather than simply checking off items on a worksheet. Who can know front end alignment principles unless they are able to drive a vehicle down the highway before and after the alignment? There are some of my guys who are exceptions to the sloppy trainer work syndrome. I have one student that majors on minors to the point of pedantry; he puts a bolt in every hole no matter what, even if he has to search for the right bolts, drill and tap the holes, or whatever. He’s slow but thorough, and he simply won’t work with other students. He wants to do everything by himself with as little help as possible from anybody else, including me. His one weakness is that he generally shows up late for class and frequently doesn’t have his written work done. Then there is the student that is intelligent, punctual, and on time with his written tests, but sloppy in his shop work and somewhat lazy. He’d rather supervise than do the work himself, and as soon as he’s done with his assigned work, that’s what he’s doing. About 80 percent of his work is done right. The other 20 percent scares the heck out of me. He frequently leaves hose clamps loose or puts them in the wrong place on the hose so that the hose might as well not have a clamp on it.
A few weeks ago, this same guy was replacing the A/C compressor clutch and coil, and fought with the big snap ring that holds the coil in place. Forty five seconds later, having replaced the coil, he was about to slide the pulley assembly back onto the compressor without installing the snap ring. He has improved some during the course of the program, but his natural tendencies have remained consistent. A tire store called and wanted a part time guy, so I sent him over there to work in the afternoons and on Fridays. Well, he lasted about two weeks before they let him go. When I called to inquire, they told me he didn’t know how to do anything (I knew better, but that was their perception, based on his performance) and that he spent too much time watching other people work. He needed to get fired from at least one job so he would know how to survive the next time around. One of my graduates has bounced from one job to another to the point that he is having trouble finding a job, but with one exception, at the time of this writing all my other graduates went straight to work in the field and have remained true to the trade. If I’m not producing students who can do the work, then I’m not doing my job. It’s as simple as that. One thing I desperately try to build into my guys is integrity; I want to train technicians that can be trusted, both by their employers and by the owners of the cars they’re servicing.To me, the most rewarding thing is to see so many of my guys still in the field after having gone through my program, still pulling wrenches and chasing sparks, some of them making more money per flat rate hour than I was when I changed careers. I guess in the final analysis, that’s what teaching automotive technology is all about. R.W.M.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 01 March 2009 )
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