Making something out of nothing: welding students excel at Salina Public Schools

Welding may not have always been a long-term career goal for Dalton Sawyer, a senior at Central High school, but it is now.

The art of joining materials together in high heat, making something out of seemingly nothing, served as an inspiration for vocation.

“It brought me to find something I really love,” Sawyer said.

On any given weekday from first bell to last dismissal, sparks take flight and the industrial shop attached to Salina Central heats up as students transform into Prometheans.

In that stuffy shop, metals instructor Cole Dow leads his students with hands-on education in one facet of Salina Public School’s robust Career and Technical Education programs.

Dow rewrote the welding program a few years ago to be geared toward student success beyond high school. The new program, he said, aims to equip students with significant time honing their craft and preparing for additional education, if they chose to go that route.

“It’s really geared to get them prepared to go out to tech college, or for some of these kids to step out of junior senior year and go right into welding some place,” Dow said.

Making something out of nothing

To get to Dow’s classroom, visitors have to walk through the spacious shop filled with half-ton boxes of scrap metal and state-of-the-art equipment that power student projects.

Each day, he begins his classes with the day’s expectations and assignments before students head into the shop to pick up where they left off the day before.

Behind Dow’s desk hangs a collection of welding gear and helmets that have been put to good use. On display just beyond the classroom’s entrance are recent student projects, and a laminated 8.5”x12” sheet of paper that reads: “This is a velociraptor-free workspace” – a humorous ode to being safe in the shop.

This semester, the metals one and metals two classes crafted pumpkins out of scrap metal, showing how the skills they built can be put to practical use.

“The pumpkins – those serve as a stress reliever for metals two students, and for metals one it applies their knowledge of how to cut something, make a shape and make an object from just looking at it,” Dow said.

There are three courses students at Salina South and Salina Central students can take in welding: metals one, metals two and metals three.

Metals one serves as an introductory course, where students learn basic skills of stick welding and mid welding.

Metals two is a building block on the skills they already built. When students take both metals one and two, they have the opportunity to earn a total of six college credits. In those two courses alone, students earn enough welding time to earn credit through the Salina Area Technical College.

Metals three is made up of the top 15 students of all the metals one and two courses from previous academic years. Here, students earn opportunity for another 7 college credits through their various hours of blueprinting and cutting, an OSHA safety 10 class, and their capstone project.

In total, there are five metals one classes, three metals two classes and one metals three class taught each year.

“The metals three students are, really, the cream of the crop, who continue to impress with their skills and drive,” Dow said.

Welding as a career

Interest in the program is growing, too.

Three years ago, the interest level was about 15% more than the number of students allowed in a course. This year, Dow said, the program had to turn away 100 students who were interested because the classes filled up so quickly.

Dammian Hightower, a Salina South junior in metals two, said being able to get into the program helped him realize the potential for a rewarding career. He said that while he isn’t completely committed to welding as a career, it is something he is considering.

“I’ve learned that even if you’re a new welder, as long as you have patience when you’re doing your weld, you’ll get better,” Hightower said.

Sawyer, on the other hand, plans to finish his next year at Salina Area Technical College and pursue a full-time traveling gig in pipeline welding.

“It’s been great,” Sawyer said of the welding program. “It’s really preparing me for what I want to do.”

Dow said some of his students have gone on to high paying jobs shortly after graduation given the local need for welders. Businesses like Salina Vortex, Blue Beacon and others have welcomed his former students who possessed a basis of skills they learned uncommonly early.

What’s more is Salina Central has been equipped with the kind of quality equipment used in technical schools that teach more advanced skills.

Students have taken advantage of these tools and translated them into success in welding competitions. Last year, Dow and a group of seniors traveled to the Missouri Welding Institute Competition, where one student placed 9th out of 400.

Forging a unique path

A Mustang alumnus himself, Dow said he is proud to claim Salina Central as his stomping ground.

After graduating high school, Dow spent 24 years in the U.S. Army, using his high school learned welding skills to weld in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He later worked on the railroad for a while, before testing his luck with an application at Central. Dow said when he first started, he was nervous, but quickly loved what he was doing.

“You teach them to be responsible young kids,” Dow said. “They can handle a lot more than what people realize. We forget that we were teenagers once, and that we could do a lot more than what the teachers were letting us.”

Dow said his favorite part about teaching his students is the lightbulb reaction that happens when they complete their finals.

“There’s that big achievement that they have, and I really enjoy seeing that,” Dow said. “You know, at first they don’t know how to do something and all the sudden something clicks and they’re like ‘wow I did this.’”

Zadan Anderson, a sophomore and aspiring full-time welder, said this is Dow’s best quality as a teacher. Anderson and his fellow classmates are inspired by Dow to push themselves to their own limits.

“Dow has taught us a lot of things that not most people would,” Anderson said. “He plans to keep us constantly paced at building our skills. And I plan to weld all my life.”

In the spring, Dow and his students will work to create the Battle Stallion – a six-and-a-half-foot tall stainless-steel horse that will be on display at one of the school entrances. Local entities invested in the welding program to make this significant project a possibility.

“Next year, were going to have all the same projects, then we’re going to get the Courageous Cougar,” Dow said. “So, we’re going to have our Central representation through metals and our Cougar representation as well.”

In the welding program, of course, there is no Central and South separation and rivalry. There’s a sense of community among the welders who are building skills to land wherever their aspirations may take them.

And they’re forging their own paths to get there.

This article originally appeared on Salina Journal: Making something out of nothing: Salina students forge unique paths