Students Catch Auto-Repair Bug Old Volkswagen Offers Hands-On Experience For Junior High Kids
Kneeling on the floor of the Volkswagen bug, Ernesto Tapia spread out pieces of rug that would help transform the yellow roadster into a treasure.
Finding the piece he wanted, Tapia grabbed a bucket of glue and began smearing it on the back. With a satisfied look, he pressed it into place.
The Eastmont Junior High School class is all about solving problems, explained teacher Bob Paine. Tapia, a ninth-grader, had just figured out how to match pieces of the rug kit to the bare floor of the old VW.
“I did the head liner and the carpet on most of the cars,” Tapia said. “I thought that was pretty cool. I’m thinking I’d like to be a mechanic or a body worker.”
Not every student will use the Volkswagen repair course, a one-year experiment, as a start toward a career. But it does fill a gap for students who learn more by using their hands than by reading a book.
“It’s such a different segment of the (school’s) population than I’m used to,” said Paine, a social studies teacher. “I thought I was doing a good job preparing for the class. I brought in a stack of reading material, hot rod magazines, and gave them out. They all just went ‘humph’ and tossed them aside.”
But when Paine showed a videotape on how to take apart a Volkswagen, the students were transfixed and were able to reproduce what they’d watched. When a professional came in to paint red flames on the hood of the roadster, they carefully watched how he laid tape for the design. Paine has learned to show students how to fix a problem, rather than telling them.
“They’re totally hands-on people,” Paine said. “You don’t hand them something and say, ‘Read this and do it.’ They’d say, ‘Show me how to do it.’ As a teacher, you have to continue to design situations where the kids can interact.”
The class formed when principal Mark Spurgeon sought volunteers to teach an elective. Paine mentioned, almost as a joke, that he’d been refurbishing Volkswagens for 25 years and that should qualify him to teach a course. The next thing Paine knew, he’d been drafted to teach it.
“That’s stepping off the ledge,” Paine said.
Now Paine is teaching Volkswagen repair twice each day in a small section of the junior high’s shop area.
The course attracted just three girls among the 50 students. One of the girls, ninth-grader Denise Jensen, rebuilt one of the engines, and when it didn’t work perfectly, she took it apart and fixed the problem.
Josh Meenach, another freshman, said the class has been valuable.
“I’ve always liked fixing stuff and wanted to learn more about cars,” he said. “I just wanted to know so if a machine breaks down, I could fix it.”
Students have learned how to work together. On one recent day, while Tapia and four others were installing the rug inside the Volkswagen, four boys were attaching signal lights near the front bumper, five boys were working on the fenders, six were buffing the finish of another car and others were busy elsewhere.