TUPELO – Taffie Ray, who teaches gifted students in grades two through eight at Verona and Plantersville, was a student herself on Monday.
Ray was among 14 teachers taking part in the Tek2Go Advanced Manufacturing Camp this week. Among the skills she learned on her first day of the three-day camp was how to weld. Not as well as she would have liked, she admitted, “but better than I thought I would.”
Along with her fellow students, Ray also saw robotic welding in the Robotics Lab and how fast and accurate robots can be. Also on the schedule for Monday was a class on making name badges and pens in the CNC Lab using both a CNC machine and a manual machine. On Tuesday, the teachers were scheduled to visit Hawkeye Industries to make a clock, and on Wednesday they’re booked for a tour of Toyota Mississippi in Blue Springs.
For Ray, the camp complemented what she was teaching her students
“We do a lot of hands-on activities,” she said. “I try to teach them life skills, critical thinking skills and all that, and I thought this was a great opportunity to get myself familiarized with other things new in the market, and take it back to them.”
For 16 years, the camp has introduced eighth through 10th grade students to the world of advanced manufacturing. The camp has been offered to elementary and high school teachers for the past decade. Tek2Go is a SparkForce (formerly Nuts, Bolts and Thingamajigs) Foundation Camp and is sponsored by the Community Development Foundation, Itawamba Community College, Hawkeye Industries and the Toyota Wellspring Education Fund.
Gina Black, CDF’s director of events and chair of SparkForce, said the camp has served about 500 students and teachers over the years.
“We have 350 camps nationwide, and Mississippi leads the way with about 85 of them,” Black said. “We’ve led the way.”
Black said the camp for teachers exposes them to advanced manufacturing, and it also serves as a chance to earn continuing education unit credits. Teachers from various areas of study — music, art, math, science, etc. — take part in the program each year.
“Teachers can earn 2.4 CEUs, so in order to do that we ask them to go back to their schools in the fall and give a presentation on the camp to their faculty and students,” she said. “That has more of an impact on what the camps do, and they show the projects that they did. Then they turn in the attendance sheets and some other paperwork to ICC and they can earn the CEUs.”
Sam Baker, who teaches physical education at Houston Upper Elementary, said he went to the camp because of the experience. He wanted to gain insight into manufacturing.
“I like to do these types of camps because it’s more hands-on and you learn new skills and stuff,” he said.
His welding job also could have been better, he admits.
“I’ve done it before, years ago, when I was in high school, but it was a good refresher,” he said. “But I’m looking forward to visiting the (Toyota) factory, seeing how they work, and how the different machines work. It’s really interesting to see how you can program it to cut out, weld, paint, whatever you need it to do.”