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Mitch Lown and Dave Arndt teach technology education to students at Bangor High School and West Salem High School. A few of the courses they teach were once, years ago, called “shop class,” but the curriculum is far more advanced today.

Not only are these not your father’s shop classes, they aren’t shop classes at all.

Computer programs, 3-D designs, architectural drawing, engineering, mass production and the design and marketing of products are only some of the areas local high school students are tackling in Lown and Arndt’s classes.

Arndt has been at West Salem for 29 years and he prides himself on his facility and the school’s ability to keep with the technology.

“Still, it is changing constantly,” Arndt said. “You think you’re keeping up with the curriculum, but it’s a real challenge — courses that used to be taught in a year are now being taught in a semester.”

A partial list of the courses that Arndt and Lown teach — construction and remodeling, technology systems, manufacturing, principles of engineering, advanced engineering, computer-aided design — makes it clear that they are doing their best to prepare students for life after graduation with challenging, meaningful projects.

Lown’s classes use 14 computers; Arndt’s have access to 12.

“Any more than that and it’s hard to give kids all the attention they deserve,” Arndt said.

BHS is right next to the interstate and in the next few months Lown’s class is going to install a wind generator adjacent to the freeway.

“It’s something I read about in a magazine,” Lown said. “I thought ‘What a great way to get kids involved with winds and alternative energy.’

“We’re going to have underground wires going back to the shop and we’ll also have built-in sensors so we see how much power we’re getting — it should be a fun project.”

Students in Arndt’s CAD class drew up the plans for the lab area now in use.

“They get real-life experience, which is what I like to give them instead of make-work projects,” Arndt said.

This year Arndt’s students are heavily involved in remodeling the lodge at West Salem’s school forest outside of Sparta so that it can be used year-round.

“We’ve put in all new windows, new siding and the inside has been totally gutted. We’ve also rewired, insulated, and hung sheet rock. Last year we added a canopy over the entrance and built a new addition,” Arndt said.

In the past, Lown’s advanced engineering class — he calls those students “shopheads” — has entered a high-mileage vehicle competition with impressive results: 247 miles to the gallon. They are doing so again this year, using an aluminum ladder for the vehicle’s frame.

“We have to design and build everything from scratch. Aluminum is very tricky to weld — the boys are getting some great experience doing it,” Lown said.

Both Lown and Arndt enjoy their jobs.

“I’d be bored if I was doing the same thing every day,” Arndt said. “But the best part is when the kids come in with a completed project that’s usable, that they’re proud of and they can take home. I’ve had students come back 20 years later and tell me, ‘I still have that gun cabinet, or whatever, I made in your class at home,”

Lown, in his fifth year at Bangor, too, is happy to be where he is.

“This is a perfect fit for me. I like smaller schools — it’s easier to relate to kids and it seems like the kids in small towns are good kids,” Lown said. “I love it. It’s not like a job. It’s fun coming to work every day. I don’t like standing up and lecturing and the kids enjoy the hands-on stuff, too. Plus we don’t have the kinds of discipline problems you have elsewhere because the kids like being here.”

In their manufacturing classes, both Lown and Arndt give students a feel for what it’s like to set up a business and produce and sell a product. And they do make a profit. Lown’s students, for example, built and sold mounting kits for deer antlers and made a profit on the venture.

Arndt said he always stays conscious of the world that students will face after graduation.

“I address every class as if it’s a job,” he said. “We’re not here to waste time because that’s not the way it’s going to be when they get in the job market. The biggest challenge for me is changing the attitudes of some students and instilling a work ethic. If they say they are going to do something, they need to follow through on that.”

Recent projects completed by technology students in the two schools include gun cabinets, end tables, stools, dog kennels, a snowmobile dolly and a pedestrian bridge that had to meet certain design specifications. Lown said that if students are interested in something, he likes to incorporate that into the class because then they are motivated.

“Last year some of my students modified a flat-bottom boat so that it could be used for bow fishing on Lake Neshonoc and the Mississippi. They built a platform with a railing and then hung lights around it for night fishing. I even went out with them one night and it worked really well,” Lown recalled.

Both Lown and Arndt are happiest when their students make something they’re proud of or — even better — use the skills they’ve learned for success after high school graduation.

“Our students do very well in technical schools,” Arndt noted.

One of Arndt’s proudest moments was when a student he’d taught returned from college a year or two after his high school graduation. “See this book?” he asked Arndt. “I converted every one of the drawings in it to CAD for my professor.”