In January of 2023 our class participated in a number of field trips to the College of New Caledonia in Prince George. It was interesting to see the different trades programs offered to high school students there and I feel it is a great alternative for kids who are passionate about pursuing a career in a trade. Seeing students of welding, mechanics and carpentry at work and learning about the different skills involved in these jobs helped me find a new strategy to motivate students: As a prospective Math and Science teacher I anticipate to hear a lot of students complaining that they don’t need to learn all this stuff, because they will be going into a trade. I can draw on this experience to let them know that every trade uses Math and Science all the time… But it would be much better to show them, which can be done at the CNC facilities.
Our assignment was to build a marble run out of cardboard (we didn’t use any math other than crude and eyeballing – based measuring). Our final product was functional and worked nearly flawlessly, but upon carrying this beautiful project past actual carpentry students constructing literal staircases I had to smirk just a little bit. It helped me realise something: To build a functional staircase you need to do a lot of math. And being able to present a fully functional staircase shows that you are able to do the math. So I strode out of CNC thinking: What a fun math test that would be…