|
Page 1 of 4
Hang out
with a group of people in secondary woodworking, and the conversation
will usually come around to the shortage of skilled labour. The answer
to it, according to many industry members, is to do what other sectors
have been doing for years — get students excited at a young age about
entering the industry. Igniting passion in your future workforce, some
say, is key to both getting young people to enter the industry and
keeping them there.
Focusing too much on the fine details of the trade and not enough on the excitement it can offer is one mistake Ralph Fehr, operations manager of Elias Woodwork in Winkler, Man., says the industry is making. “When students are in high school they’re not going to absorb all the information about wood fibre and the cellular structure of different types of wood,” he says. “I think we need to get them excited about woodworking, get them working on the fancy machines. We need to be working at just getting people interested.”
Cue Roger West, a construction technology teacher at College Heights Secondary School in Guelph, Ont. Since embarking on a mini-house replica project this fall he has seen his senior construction class go from dismal enrollment and the threat of cancellation to having more interested students than can fit in the class.
|
