Temple Grandin encourages hands-on, visual learners at Career Pathways Summit

Hands-on learning.

There’s not enough of it in our educational system, prominent Colorado State University professor Temple Grandin said Friday while speaking to 230 high school students at the Career Pathways Summit.

You don’t need to learn algebra or graduate from college to have a successful career, she said. You can be autistic, as Grandin is. Or dyslexic. Or suffer from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Or have any number of other characteristics that might be considered a barrier to employment.

Her audience, in an auditorium at Timberline Church in Fort Collins, were students from a dozen or so school districts throughout Northern Colorado who had been identified as having obstacles that might prevent them from following the traditional path to a high-paying career serving a critical role in our society.

And it was obvious by the questions they asked afterward that they liked what they heard.

“I want to let these kids know that there’s some really good careers that they can be in,” Grandin told the Coloradoan in an interview before taking the stage. “I spent 25 years on heavy construction in Monfort plants and on Cargill plants, and I’m going to estimate that about 20% of the people I worked with on these big, complicated jobs — that were drafting technicians laying out entire factories or they were designing or patenting equipment — were either autistic, dyslexic or ADHD.”

Students from Fort Collins, Loveland, Berthoud, Longmont, Wellington, Windsor, Severance, Greeley, Eaton, Ault, Fort Lupton and the surrounding areas had spent the previous 2 ½ hours Friday learning about various career opportunities through hands-on demonstrations provided by more than 30 local businesses.

Students rotated through each station in small groups, learning more about each career option along the way:

• Pipefitters and sheet-metal workers from Denver-based unions, each touting their apprenticeship and training programs.
• A Poudre Fire Authority engine, where the crew talked about the tools they use while students got to try on some firefighting gear
• Mobile dog-grooming vans from Spa4Paws, where students could help wash and trim dogs’ fur
• A school bus, with the engine open for inspection, where and Aims Community College representative talked about the school’s program to obtain a commercial drivers’ license
• Classroom presentations from CSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where students used microscopes and virtual-reality goggles to get a feel for its educational and career options
• Tables of medical equipment, where nurses from the St. Vrain Valley School District let students try their hand at CPR, preparing a syringe to give an injection and checking a patient’s blood pressure and other vital signs

All to get that initial exposure that might lead to a career that doesn’t necessarily require the traditional classroom learning of most academic degrees.

Grandin believes our country and all of its hands-on and visual learners like herself would be better served by the European model, where students in about ninth grade choose from one of two paths — one leading to a university and its degree programs and the other toward technical, skilled trades.

“And they don’t look at the tech route as some sort of lesser form of intelligence,” she said.

Labor loss in skilled trades in the United States is reaching a critical point as Baby Boomers reach retirement, Grandin and others said. Multiple studies have shown that for every five workers in skilled trades who retire, only one new worker comes in to replace them.

That’s why Joe Peneton was operating an exhibit in the parking lot hoping to recruit students to the Denver Pipefitters Union Local 208 apprenticeship program. They’re trying to bring in about 80 new students each year to begin a five-year “earn as you learn opportunity” to replenish their workforce.

“We’re definitely fighting a numbers game,” he said.

Participants work during the day for one of the program’s 70 contractors, earning a paycheck, and attend classes two nights a week to “reinforce some of the theory behind our processes.” They graduate in five years as a journeyman and have the opportunity to earn as many as 45 college credits along the way.

Graduates have gone on to be foremen and even company owners, he said.

“The sky’s the limit as far as how much work and effort they want to put into where they want to be.”

Grandin got her start by visualizing an efficient design for meat-processing plants, then drawing those out with detailed sketches and taking them to key decision-makers at Monfort and Cargill, two of the largest meat producers in the country at the time.

She never did learn algebra, she said. That was for conceptual learners and not something she could visualize.

Her latest book, released in October, is titled “Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions.”

And those people are needed in the skilled trades, to build and maintain the mechanical equipment we have come to rely upon.

Sure, she said, you need the “degreed engineers” to design water systems, power sources, determine wind and snow loads, refrigeration, boilers and other things that require a sound knowledge of math, chemistry, physics.

But you also need people to build the machines and other equipment those degreed engineers are factoring into their designs. People to keep the power grid humming and the escalators, elevators and conveyer belts running.

“It’s a real problem, and we’re losing skills,” Grandin said. “Who’s going to keep the power grid running, keep our infrastructure going. …

“I don’t care how many computers we’ve got. Someone needs to go and actually fix the mechanical parts, and that’s where the mechanical thinker like me, who has difficulty with algebra” is needed.

“You don’t need algebra to fix elevators. You don’t need algebra to deal with all the mechanical equipment.”

You need skilled workers. More than we’re turning out right now in the United States, she said.

“That’s why things like this are very valuable,” she said. “In careers, it first starts with exposure, and then mentoring. That’s really important.

“People ask me all the time how I got involved in the cattle industry. I was exposed to it as a teenager, that’s how I got involved in it. If I hadn’t been exposed, I wouldn’t have gotten involved.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.