2017 RETA Breeze Nov-Dec

education

One

Kind of a

by Jim Price, Education Manager

In early August, I visited the new building with Marcos. A small screw compressor package had already arrived, and the desks and chairs were on the way. Marcos began teaching at the end of August. The school suggested that there might be one or two students interested in the program, at least for the first offering. The class settled in with 12 students. Mr. Donald May is the Teacher of Record for the Refrigeration Technology Program at the Career and Technical Education Center for Azle High School. Mr. May assists with classroom management, coordination with the school administration, scheduling, grades, posting information to the Online Campus, and other important program support tasks. I joined Marcos to help out with teaching following the Hershey Conference. Although the class time is only one hour, the students are very eager to learn and some stay after class to ask questions.

They are picking up the concepts quickly, are attentive, and responsive. As the program grows, white boards and projectors will be added. Right now, Marcos uses the walls as one big white board. Fortunately, the walls are FRP and with a little effort can be cleaned off. All the students have iPads, so it is easy to load diagrams, documents, and pictures to the school’s Online Campus for their viewing as homework and classroom reference. Also, they can visit manufacturer websites, YouTube, and other suggested sites to supplement the classroom instruction. The inventory of training aids is growing. Any surplus valves, control valves, small equipment that you might wish to donate would be helpful. Keep in mind the classroom has limited space, so “small” is the operative word. They will have an opportunity to see some of the big iron during tours to local facilities. The objective of the class is to have high school graduates with a basic

There is a new one-of-a-kind, and I think first of its kind, a program at the Azle High School in Azle, Texas. Azle is a small community northwest of Fort Worth and home to MR Braz and Associates. About a year ago, Mr. Marcos Braz called me and wanted to talk about a dream he had of putting a vocational class in the local high school to teach industrial refrigeration. We met and talked about it briefly and life went on. Over the next year when I had the opportunity to talk with Marcos, he always mentioned that he was working on the class and that I needed to be prepared to help with the teaching. Then in June of 2017, I ran into Marcos at an event we were both attended. He was excited, the school system was building him a new classroom and would be assigning a full-time teacher to work with him on the program.

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