Richard Hopkins

• Approach to teaching
• Transferable experience

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Richard Hopkins developed a five-year program at Napanee District Secondary School in Napanee, Ontario that takes his students out of the classroom to help local industries solve problems.

The students assess the needs of the business, apply relevant principles and come up with a workable solution. The students then construct machines to meet their clients' needs. These have included a computer-controlled, hydraulic hospital bed; a portable sheep pen; and a unit to move damaged material around the local Goodyear tire plant. This experience shows students how to apply their studies in the real world and leaves them with highly marketable skills.

Because of his success in providing a rich and relevant education for his students, Richard has become a lecturer with the Queen's University faculty of education. In 1993, a group of his Grade 12 students wrote the Fluid Power Society of America's exam and earned Fluid Power Certification, a feat accomplished by only two other North American high school groups that year.

Approach to teaching

It is the educator's job to prepare students for a multicultural world in which key to economic success is knowledge, and where personal success mostly on attitude.

Education in Canada is not changing as quickly as the world around us. Generally, we are still teaching what was taught 25 years ago, when specialization was the key to success. The ability to find links between different fields is becoming increasingly important in our economy. To succeed in the workplace, today's students must be multi-skilled problem solvers, team players and good communicators.

Technological education gives students the opportunity to do this by exploring topics such as manufacturing, communications, transportation, construction, services and new technologies. Students should be able to make educated decisions, solve problems systematically and evaluate the effects of technology on our world.

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Transferable experience

My program emphasizes project-based learning — jargon that means we get students involved with the community by having them build things for local businesses, hospitals and seniors' homes. We do this in no small way: every semester, we run 70 to 80 projects involving anywhere from 500 to 600 students.

Many of our institutions, community service groups and businesses are scaling back their activities, creating many potential projects for our students. I have found that business managers, hospital administrators, entrepreneurs and coordinators in government institutions are all searching for new ways to get their work done.

Here are a few suggestions for teachers planning school-community projects.

• I began with a single project in an area I knew fairly well. The confidence you build on your first project will help you with later projects.
• Once you have one successful project under your belt, pick up the phone and call local businesses and institutions. You will be able to point to your past achievement and you will be amazed at the positive responses.
• Be open and enthusiastic with your clients at all times. Communicate often and invite them into your classroom regularly.
• The two most important words for teachers involved in this type of activity are energy and flexibility. You will not simply be applying knowledge that you and your students already have; rather, you will have to learn how to solve each individual problem you take on.
• Remember that failure is normal, but that it can always be corrected with diligence. The first attempt to construct an apparatus is rarely successful. You have to show your students that this is part of the process and that the key is to be able to address the problems you discover as you go along.
• Avoid double accounting. Your clients should pay for materials directly, or you should set up a purchase order system with them that you can use. The school administration's budgeting process is not designed for projects like this. Transferring the money to the school creates twice as much work and your students may end up wondering if they are actually in an accounting course.
• Evaluation can be handled effectively with Ted Loney's Project Design Manuals. I recommend them highly. They are ideal texts for people who are unfamiliar with taking a project from the first inspiration to completion. The manuals provide a documented process, including 26 different evaluation stages, and are published by McGraw-Hill.

This sort of project is an ideal way to show students how their education will be used in the real world. They quickly learn that the ability to learn continually is much more important than memorized knowledge. They find out that you rarely know how to do a project when you begin it, and that you just have to get out there, learn how to do it and do it.