Teaching shop class six feet apart

Off of a dirt road in the rural town of Hiawatha, Kansas, Agriculture Mechanics teacher Ellen Blackwell, 24, prepares to welcome students into the shop to start working on their mechanical projects for the day. She starts the day by disinfecting tools, welding machines, helmets, work stations, and pencils.

"A process that used to take me about 3 minutes in the morning now takes me close to 30 minutes," said Blackwell.

With shop classes usually being interactive and many students having to share tools and equipment and working on teams to get a project done, shop classes had to go through a massive change to be able to be taught during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blackwell said, "the old way of teaching shop classes is not COVID-19 safe, so we had to reinvent the way we teach."

Reinventing the way of teaching the class took Blackwell and two other shop teachers three weeks to come up with a plan to have these classes available safely. This required them to spend those three weeks resetting up the classroom by moving work stations six feet apart, having to purchase disinfectants so that students can use the equipment without the fear of catching COVID-19, and having to come up with a plan to enforce COVID-19 rules on students.

"Having a disciplinary plan in place for students who do not follow COVID-19 rules like wearing a mask in class, has had a major impact on us keeping these classes safe," said Mr. Williams, another mechanical shop teacher at Hiawatha High School.

Changing the way these shop classes are taught has allowed them to be available for students to take and for students to learn more at school beyond the traditional English and Math classes.

"Many of these students love shop classes and want to go into careers that go with the shop classes, so I am just glad that we have been able to come up with a plan to be able to safely offer these classes during the COVID-19 pandemic," Blackwell said.