ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Punching a time clock, creating cost estimates, making materials lists, and completing welding projects for Albuquerque Public Schools while earning money. This isn’t a job posting; it’s how Valley High School teacher Shawn Coffey has operated his classroom while teaching students the ins and outs of welding and the trade industry.
“So I try to run the classroom like a job, like a business. So I am the foreman type. The students are the employee version of that. And within that, we’ll create job titles,” Coffey explained.
After clocking in at the physical time clock hanging on the wall, students jump into their assigned roles, which include a safety foreman position and another role monitoring the class’s email for project requests coming from within APS.
Next, those projects head to the job board, where students decide which jobs to take based on their skill set.
“So the students will team up, and they’ll take that job, and then they’ll do an estimate for that job, and they’ll send out the estimate, get it approved with real-life material costs, labor costs, taxes, all that stuff. Once they get that job approved, then I’ll sign off on it, and the student will start on that job,” Coffey said.
Some of the jobs students have completed include fixing broken metal trays and building cabinets with racks for the JROTC program to store and lock up ceremonial rifles. When the job is done, the customer signs off on a final invoice, and the students enrolled in Coffey’s intership program get paid by APS.
“They’re paid $15 an hour by the district to take my first period class; allowed to work 10 hours a week, or four hours a day. And it’s super popular and everybody wants to get in there (and make money because they get a credit for the internship and a credit for the welding,” Coffey explained.
This summer, students, under Coffey’s supervision, got a special opportunity to put their welding skills to the test and leave their mark on the community by helping install a metal art piece created by artist Eric Garcia for the Westside Community Center.
Through that project, students learned about creating a patina effect, custom fabrication, and installation with joinery of pieces. The student’s work will be recognized with a plaque and at a ribbon-cutting event planned later in the year, Coffey said.
“We’ve proven that if they’re trained properly and given the right tools to do the job, they can absolutely run right into that industry and do it. And that’s what they’re doing,” he added.
Video of Westside Community Center art installation:
Coffey’s teaching model has proven to be successful not only through the projects his students have completed but also in the fact that many of them have continued into the trade industry after graduation.
He said he has three years of students working in the industry, and most recently, he had 11 students enter the industry immediately, using credits earned from the high school welding program to their advantage.
“So all my students last year went in as 1.5 apprentices. They skipped pre, they skipped level one, they went in as level 1.5, which immediately calculates, I mean, means they’re getting more money, like immediately. Some of these kids are going in at 23, $24 an hour,” he said.
Coffey’s and his students’ successes have helped create a bridge with the union, a relationship he hopes to strengthen as he prepares to leave his classroom for a job with the Local 49 Sheet Metal Workers Union.
In his new role, he plans to continue to work with APS, his replacement, and his students to ensure their success.
“I have sophomores, juniors, and seniors that are still my kids. They’re my kids, and I’m going to pull them when they graduate, and they know it,” Coffey explained.
In addition to maintaining his relationship with the school and current and former students, the South Valley native hopes to create more pathways for people to enter the trade industry.
He will start his new role with the union in September.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
