November 12, 2002

It's really about life skills

Jerry Hochberg talks with pride about the jewelry workshop at ISB and the work the students do there. — TERRY FREDRICKSON

When you meet a teacher who runs an exceptional programme,
you know ther is a story to tell

Story by MAUREEN PAETKAU
Additional reporting by TERRY FREDRICKSON For a teacher, Jerry Hochberg spends a lot of time in markets. In those markets — Thai markets, that is — he gets much of his inspiration and the real-life objects that he brings into his suite of classrooms at the International School Bangkok (ISB).

In those classrooms, this enterprising teacher has created two fantastic workshops where creativity, discipline and challenge are combined to teach technical and life skills.

The Industrial Design (ID) course at ISB grew out of the former Industrial Arts programme. The difference, Mr Hochberg explains, is that Industrial Arts was a course in which "every kid would fashion pretty much the same item. There was very little room for creativity. They would learn how to make a plan and then manufacture something and learn some basic woodworking techniques."

By contrast, "this class integrates technology and ideas. There’s an open-endedness about what are the appropriate materials to put together to solve a problem – like a mouse trap or a bird trap," he says of the ten-year-old ID course at ISB.

In addition to Industrial Design, a high school (grades 9-12) course with three 80 minutes classes a week, Hochberg teaches Jewellery Design for high school and Woodworking, a middle school (grades 7 and 8) course. All three are electives.

Materials, equipment and ideas are sourced locally. "When I first got here," Hochberg recalls, "I was prowling the alleys on a motorcycle and seeing the jewellery industry here – it’s so rich here. Tools are cheap and plentiful. Materials – silver, buffalo horn – everything is available.

"A machine like this in America," he continues, "is $5000. This comes out of Chinatown and it’s $900."

Even that would be a lot for most schools. Hochberg has been able to create the courses and equip the workshops because of the position of ISB as an international school with a mandate to provide quality education to the expatriate community.

But it’s not just materials and equipment that Hochberg has brought into the courses he teaches. He has an eye for ingenuity – Thai ingenuity. He saw on television a mousetrap made by a Thai out of used plastic water bottles. That created a challenge, and challenge is where most of Hochberg’s students’ projects start.

Start with a challenge

That mousetrap, he explains, was ingenious and cheaply made with available resources. "Since Thailand is rich in [used] water bottles," Hochberg hardly needs to remind anyone, "this was an excellent idea. Four moving parts – its’ a Thai invention.

"So I told them [ID students] to take a water bottle and make a mouse trap." But there were limitations, as he explains. "They couldn’t copy his idea." They had to come up with a different trapping mechanism. "They came up with some great stuff. One used a laser pointer, another a micro switch inside, another used balance and an architectural release system. And they got their A by catching a mouse."

Hochberg consults with an ID student on his robot car drawing. It must show in detail how the car will work. — TERRY FREDRICKSON

Now, that’s incentive!

The incentive in this year’s ID project is to design a robot car that will toss an opponent out of the sumo ring. Three motors, originally from the focusing mechanism of photocopy machines purchased from a street stall, have to be adapted to guide the car and power a defensive or offensive mechanism.

"It gives them an incentive to do the engineering and to apply what they’ve learned in physics about levers and mechanical advantage – things like that."

At the end of her course, this eight-grade student, like her classmates, will have a Thai musical instrument she made herself. — JERRRY HOCHBERG

In the middle school woodworking programme students are carving a Thai musical instrument, the phin. In the past, students had made unimaginative shelves and stools, so, Hochberg explains, "this time, let’s teach them a lot about wood, about joining wood, carving and finishing and have them walk away with a Thai instrument. Before they started, I gave each kid a CD of what the instrument sounds like. They went home with that to show their families. Their mothers and fathers said, you’ll never be able to carve that. But I said if a nine-year-old Thai kid can do this, you can do this."

The challenge in jewellery design is to make a piece of jewellery from scratch. "Make it for somebody and make it for something that they’re about. Don’t work for grades," he says. They have to be making something with their heart in it.

There are considerable technical challenges. "They get raw material," he explains. They buy silver, 300 baht worth usually in the beginning. Then they roll it down, they make their own sheet metal and their own wire just the way a Thai goldsmith does. In SE Asia, everybody makes everything from scratch.

"All these same machines are in a gold shop," he comments, "so when they walk by a gold shop they know all about what the guy is doing."

The importance of discipline

Wandering through the jewellery workshop you are immediately struck by the sense of order.

"The reason everything is exposed – the pliers and everything," Hochberg explains, is "these kids have a hard time cleaning up, putting things away and staying organised. So when I check their benches out, I want to be able to see that their tools are all replaced before I dismiss them. They get used to putting things away. I’m really a bug on work habits."

He’s more than a bit of a technology bug as well. Hochberg shows a small plastic statue of a boy. "He’s got a camera in his mouth and what I do is put him by a student, so I watch them at my desk. I make a video from that."

Students complain that his spying is unfair until they realise that it’s really a teaching device; they begin to see their own awkward or unsafe work habits and are on the road to self-improvement. They begin to realise the lesson he wants them to learn about the importance of discipline and correct procedure.

No project begins without time spent on the basic skills necessary to move to a high level of production.

Before students begin fashioning their piece of jewellery, there are two weeks of learning how to draw. Then they learn how to correctly use the soldering torches. "Because they have this innate fear. I go over that with them, show them how dangerous it is," Hochberg says.

"They’re doing a silver soldering exercise now, a small desk sculpture, to learn the finesse of silver soldering." The sculpture is made to specifications and must have a theme. "Once they can do this they can do jewelry on a very tiny scale."

Hochberg knew that the carving on the neck of the phin would be difficult for the seventh and eighth graders, because it’s a negative process.

"They can’t put anything back once they take it away." he explains. "The way we teach them how to do it is by carving clay in front of them. Then they can see how something is relief-carved and what they have to do to get certain parts of the design to come forward."

When they are ready to work on the wood, he says, showing an example, "they start off with a paper pattern glued to the wood and they number with 1 which is the highest level, 2 is the second lowest, 3 is the lowest. That way, when they start to carve, they keep that in mind."

Discipline is extremely important because of the high powered band saws and soldering torches in abundance in the ISB workshops. Safety procedures are an integral part of everything students learn.

Record and show

Technology is everywhere in Hochberg’s workshops. Outside the classrooms there is a monitor running pictures of students at work – close-ups of hands and tools, longer shots of completed creative work.

Hochberg is proud of his use of technology and the exposure it gives the students. "I’ve taken old technology – computers out of the school – and set up slide shows. Normally, this stuff was thrown away or given away to Thai schools. These 166s and 133 pentiums are great for loading jpegs [digital photos]. Because the stuff they do is so miniscule, they don’t really get much advertising. I advertise their work. And that gets more kids taking the elective."

Before the ID students began adapting the motors for their fighting robot cars, Hochberg showed them a slide presentation that demonstrated how to prepare the motors – what parts had to be cut off.

Recently, Hochberg has made a video instruction library. "The medium is so popular in Asia, players are everywhere for almost no money!" he comments. "They provide instant menu access to any segment of instruction, without the hunting forward and reverse to find content as in a video tape." Also, he continues, "with a video projector in my class every student sees, even the tiniest elements of technique, safety tips and great examples of work over the past ten years at the school. That’s great for motivation.

The outcomes

By the time they complete a course, Hochberg explains, "they know a lot about the integrity of materials. By that I mean they have accumulated an understanding of what it takes to cut, shape, form and connect materials to themselves and other materials and what properties each has that predisposes it for a unique application. Students develop a sense of that.

"Another thing is," Hochberg comments, "this is a very academic setting, this school, and they don’t have a lot of life experience. A Thai kid who lives out on a farm knows all about mice. They [ISB students] knew almost nothing about living creatures. A girl begins by saying ‘I’m going to make a bird trap. The bird’s going to walk up and go through this door.’ Well, why is it going to go through this door?"

Obviously students have to learn about living creatures to get their A by trapping them.

Giving another example, Hochberg describes beginning students in his courses. "when they hold the pliers, you can tell they’re total amateurs, they’ve never held a pliers before. A kid in the States who’s been taking cars apart – you watch the way he turns a screwdriver in his hands or a pliers. They have this finesse because they’ve had experience. These kids need this experience."

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