Try out a trade
Skills competition gives youth a hands-on experience with several disciplines
Jacob Kochylema’s hand recoils back in shock and surprise. He’s just been jolted with a quick 10,000 volts from a magneto, the little motor that creates electricity for spark plugs in aircraft engines.
The magneto operator is fellow Grade 6 Rutland Middle School classmate Tammalee Hicks.
She laughs hilariously as Jacob shakes his hand and comments that his fingers still feel like they are reverberating.
The shocking experience is all in good fun at Friday’s Skills Canada B.C. 20th anniversary celebration at the new Okanagan College Trades Complex at the Kelowna campus.
The event featured competitions in nine trades disciplines for high school students to determine who will advance to the provincial Skills Canada contest in Abbotsford next month.
It also hosted middle school and high school students to take part in Trades and Technologies Discovery Day to be exposed to trades education and jobs.
The shocking magneto was the highlight at tables touting the college’s aircraft maintenance engineering course.
Kids used screwdrivers to take the little machines apart and put them back together and then test if they were working with the hand shock.
“It’s just a fun way to expose kids to something mechanical,” said aircraft maintenance instructor Hal Hobenshield.
“Kids are exposed to video games early, but not anything mechanical. If we can get kids excited about the trades and aviation they can see what a good career it can be, especially with Kelowna Flightcraft (now KF Aerospace) being right here in town.”
There were also carpentry, automotive repair and electronics tables for kids to try a trade.
Meantime, at the new Junior Skills Competition, Grade 6 to 12 students were building little cyborgs as part of the Sumo Robot contest.
Kai Czabany, 14, from Osoyoos Secondary School was one of the first to get his robot working.
“You’re given a little gear box, some sheet metal, wood and wires and you have to make a controller and robot that moves,” said Czabany.
In the wood shop, Colby Mintran, a Grade 10 student from Okanagan Mission Secondary, didn’t have time to stop and talk because he was in the midst of the timed carpentry and joinery competition to make a wooden saw horse.
However, Tijana Nelson, 18, a first-year college carpentry and joinery student did have time to chat.
She was in the shop practising because she’s already set to attend the provincial Skills Canada Competition in Abbotsford in April.
“I’ve already been to provincials as a high school student, so it will be great to go again as a college student,” said Nelson.
“My instructor picked me because I’m doing well in class and I keep my cool under pressure. In competition, when I get the plans I actually look at them, make a plan to cut the wood and grooves and then proceed calmly.”
More and more women are going into trades. Nelson’s first-year class is made up of 11 men and five women.