It used to be that if you wanted to look into a vocational or technical program in high school, you pretty much had two options: construction or automotive.
The world is a much different – and better – place now. You can take up cooking, fire science, graphic design and tons of other interesting and useful skills as part of your studies at Concord Regional Technical Center.
But you can still go for those classic mainstays, if that’s your thing.
Just ask Matrayia Stanford and Nate Cushman, two seniors enrolled in the automotive program at CRTC.
Stanford has been doing an internship at Garry’s Service Center while Cushman has been doing his at Banks Collision Center. Both said they’ve always liked fixing and working on things, and both credited their families with giving them the inspiration to look into this type of work.
“My grandfather was in the military working on helicopters and stuff, so I kind of wanted to follow that,” Stanford said. She wants to end up working on armored military vehicles some day, just like her grandfather did, and thought studying automotive would be a good way to sort of get her feet wet – or should we say, get her hands dirty.
But not too dirty.
“We won’t have them do anything dangerous,” said Jeff White, owner of Garry’s, regarding the high school interns he regularly takes in. “We’re just trying to give kids a realistic look at what a career (in this field) might be.”
Although many students who choose to participate in the elective program are already inclined to be interested the work, sometimes the internships show them that it’s not what they want to do, White said. And that’s just as important.
But for Stanford, it’s been an enjoyable experience thus far. For the past three weeks she’s been helping the auto techs with inspections, oil changes, test rides – all the basic aspects of auto maintenance 101 (that’s not the actual name of this class by the way) – and digging it.
“It’s good to get hands-on experience and see what actually happens,” she said.
And the internship program is only part of the overall experience. Students spend about half of the week – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, in Stanford’s case – out in the field, but a lot of real-world stuff goes down in the classroom, too.
“Even what we call ‘classroom days,’ we go in the shop,” said Scott Mayotte, one of the two automotive teachers at the tech center.
Mayotte took a career path similar to one many of his students have – he went to a high school vocational program, then to a technical college, then on to Volkswagen, where he turned wrenches for 18 years before switching over to the teaching side. He loved the greasy-pants, bloody-knuckle work, but he really loves the teaching gig, and it doesn’t take a toll on the body the way the shop labor does.
One guy not concerned about the physical aspect of the job is Cushman. The high school senior looks right at home getting dirty with the other techs at Banks Collision. That’s because he’s been working on cars with his dad – who works at a shop in Manchester – for most of his life.
“I’ve always done work with him,” Cushman said.
Much like he did working with his dad as a kid, at Banks, he does a little bit of everything: interior work, removing fenders, assessing damage to body panels, painting – you name it.
“Body work is probably my favorite out of all of it,” he said.
And since he’s had lots of experience and has a good idea of what he’s doing, he gets to sort of go after whichever project most interests him each day, said Rich Tether, the tech working with Cushman.
Last week, Cushman and Tether were working on some front-end damage to an SUV. Cushman pretty much had at it while Tether stood by his side, offering pointers and making sure everything was being done correctly.
So with his background knowledge of the field, hands-on skills and his family’s familiarity with the automotive industry, Cushman probably wants to open his own shop some day, right?
He has his goals set higher than that – way higher.
“I’m actually going into the advanced manufacturing trade,” he said. “I have an internship program I’m going into at the beginning of the summer for General Electric Aviation, where I’ll be doing CNC programming and things like that, working on machines, making jet engines.”
Sounds pretty advanced (get it?). But how could the skills acquired working at a collision shop help with building jet engines and other crazy stuff like that?
“I think it’s awesome to have a mechanical background going into that,” Cushman said. “Most guys going into that, they know the numbers . . . but they don’t know what the product’s going to look like because they don’t have that hands-on background, and I think that gives me an advantage going into the future.”
And that gets back to what the tech center is all about – preparing students for real work in the real world.
Back when our parents were in school, the vocational programs were the destinations for soon-to-be dropouts and kids with behavioral problems (except for Mayotte, of course). It was assumed those kids could only ever have a shot working in the dirt. Now, these programs are geared toward highly motivated, focused students who know this is what they want to do, so they seek it out.
“They chose to come here,” Mayotte said. “They enjoy being here.”