Wisconsin shop teachers overhaul curriculums, encourage students to consider trades

Technical education teachers at Wisconsin high schools are transforming shop class — and encouraging more students to consider careers in the trades.

Right now, Americans are questioning the value of higher education, especially with the rising cost of education and burden of student debt. According to a 2024 survey from the Pew Research Center, only 22 percent of U.S. adults say the cost of a four-year college degree today is worth it, even if someone has to take out loans.

At the same time, jobs in the trades are among Wisconsin’s “hottest jobs”— jobs with above-average salaries with the highest projected growth — according to the state Department of Workforce Development. And in recent years, Wisconsin high schools have seen a steady increase in enrollment in hands-on technical education courses, according to Perkins V data. That comes after years of declining enrollment nationwide in the 1990s and 2000s.

Quincy Millerjohn of Middleton used to be an English teacher. And while he enjoyed working with kids, he felt like he wasn’t preparing many of his students for success in the real world.

He went to get a welding degree at Madison College, and in 2017, he started teaching welding at Middleton High School.

Millerjohn wants to show his students the trades can be a fulfilling and lucrative career path — and one that doesn’t require an expensive four-year degree.

“There are career-worthy jobs out here,” Millerjohn told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” “These are not jobs where kids are going to run out of salary ladder in their 20s. They really can continue to progress up into careers that are going to sustain them.”

Shop class overhaul

In 2023, Gene Llanas started teaching construction at North Division High School in Milwaukee. Like Millerjohn, he wanted to give his students a pathway to success that doesn’t point to higher education.

But for Llanas to clear that pathway, shop class at North Division needed a makeover.

“[The curriculum] wouldn’t help these students move up the socioeconomic ladder. It was a lot of things like bird houses and chairs,” Llanas told “Wisconsin Today.” “[The administration] let me change it. And I started teaching them real world work, things that they can get into a trade with. And the kids love it.”

Llanas works with his students — most of whom have no construction experience — to build an entire first floor of a home over the course of the year. That includes the framing, electrical, drywalling and even the plumbing. They’re learning valuable skills that might give them a better chance at economic success.

“A lot of the students at my school aren’t going to college,” Llanas said. “To give them an option of going into the workforce at higher pay is really exciting.”

It’s an idea students at North Division are increasingly drawn to.

“Basically every student in the school wants to take this class,” Llanas said. “It’s something that they can succeed in.”

Staci Sievert of Seymour Community High School overhauled her school’s technical education program, too — and she started by transforming her own career.

Sievert had been a social studies teacher at Seymour for more than 20 years when she found out the school would be without a permanent shop teacher for the fourth year in a row. 

“I really felt like it was a need that we needed to fill in our community,” Sivert told “Wisconsin Today.” “And it was going to need to be somebody from here that fixed our problem, that got the shops back and cleaned up, that raised the bar in curriculum so that we could bring in more and better tech ed teachers.”

Sievert decided that somebody was her. She began taking woodworking classes at Fox Valley Technical College. She took night classes in welding. And she had an instructor come teach her machining. By 2017, she was teaching shop classes at Seymour.

But she didn’t stop there. To transform the shop curriculum to better prepare students for careers in the trades, she visited local manufacturers to see what kinds of work they were doing and asked them what kinds of skills they looked for in workers. She also separated the shop classes by specific skills: welding, machining, automotive, pre-engineering, woodworking and home construction. 

Investing in the future

Seymour made an investment in equipment that would prepare students for high-demand positions on the cutting edge of manufacturing, including Computer Numerical Control, or CNC, machining, which involves programming computers to guide the movement of machinery. In 2021, the community passed a $6.1 million school referendum, which helped pay for new shop equipment like CNCs.

“The highest-need job in northeast Wisconsin is a CNC machinist, and so we really want to be able to expose our kids to some knowledge and understanding of what that would be like,” Sievert said. “This is an expensive endeavor, but it’s also what we need to do.”

The students responded. Within three years, Seymour doubled the number of students in technical education classes, according to Sievert. 

Middleton High School recently made a similar investment in its technical education. 

In 2022, Middleton spent $600,000 updating equipment for manufacturing, woodworking and metalworking as part of a campus renovation project. This year, about a quarter of Middleton’s students signed up for at least one of those courses.

The new facilities help better prepare students for the modern, high-tech world of the trades, according to welding teacher Quincy Millerjohn.

“There is a lot more going into these jobs and into these classes than just showing up and doing some welding or hammering nails into wood,” Millerjohn said. “There’s a large industry need for these advanced positions, and one of the biggest hurdles is lack of familiarity.”

Millerjohn said he’s happy with the support his department receives from the district, but there’s still work to be done for offering students pathways to success besides getting a four-year college degree. 

“There is this perception that kids need to go to college … And it can be difficult to have a conversation that doesn’t feel like you’re attacking college, but to talk to students honestly about debt load and career end goals,” Millerjohn said.

“I’m elevating the work that happens in my department as worthy of the same consideration,” he added.