Building a successful welding program from the ground up

High school welding teacher Brent Tuttle (right) has earned recognition and praise for finding ways to get students in La Mirada, Calif., interested in skilled trades like welding. Images: Harbor Freight Tools for Schools

Brent Tuttle knows his welding program is blessed. With more than 30 booths in the La Mirada High School welding lab, each student has a personal workstation.

Some of those blessings are a direct reflection of the Southern California community’s investment in the skilled trades program, which Tuttle said is an offering that is still lacking elsewhere in the Los Angeles area. Others stem from the recognition he received for earning the Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence award in 2020. The rest can be attributed to the teens who have shown great interest in striking their first arcs.

Welding is not what it once was, Tuttle said. He hopes his students and future generations will take up his mantle, whether as welders or even as instructors.

“There was that negative stigma when I went to school that, ‘Oh, you’re one of those kids taking auto, welding, construction—you’re not a smart kid.’ Try having a ‘smart person’ work on a car right now; I couldn’t work on a car right now,” he said. “The trades have really changed.”

Building a Program

The La Mirada welding program is a far cry from Tuttle’s own high school days in Fontana, Calif., decades ago, when he stumbled upon welding by accident. In his high school days, a gruff Vietnam veteran taught the class, which intimidated him at first.

“I was scared, but I didn't want to go back to typing [class],” he said.

Tuttle ultimately taught welding at Fontana before eventually landing at La Mirada. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up, and he’s been there ever since.

“It was an opportunity to build a shop the way I wanted to. It was an old shop, funding was going to be there, you can design your own program and have fun,” he said. “I got to build this from scratch.”

When he started the program more than a decade ago, it had only around 100 students. Now, Tuttle’s La Mirada High School welding program has 160 to 180 students per year, split between multiple classes. It’s become such a large program that he teaches with no breaks throughout the day. It may sound daunting, but Tuttle doesn’t mind.

“When [I’m] teaching welding to these kids, I'm having fun,” he said. “It doesn't feel like a grind.”

Tuttle was given the opportunity to build the La Mirada High School welding program from the ground up.

In their first year of the welding program, students get fully immersed in shielded metal arc welding (SMAW)—rods, positioning, joints, the foundations of the process. In year two, students transition into the gas metal arc welding (GMAW) and gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) processes and learn more about exotic metals. Those who continue their welding education can learn more about exotic metals or dive into welding sculpture fabrication.

Tuttle said he had two reasons for starting the welding sculpture class. “They’re still using their welding skills but fulfilling their art requirements to get into college,” he said.

In welding sculpture, students learn how to add color with heat, how to plasma cut, how to sketch and draw, and they learn about different types of sculptures.

While welding is traditionally a shop-based program, Tuttle has made the effort to modernize his welding program by transitioning to digital offerings where applicable. Practically all assignments are digital and there are no more physical textbooks to read thanks to Miller Electric’s OpenBook platform for digital instruction.

Teaching Future Welders

In high school, Tuttle became involved in SkillsUSA, the nonprofit that provides career and technical education opportunities for students. In fact, he was selected as the 2016 National SkillsUSA Alumni of the Year.

Through SkillsUSA, he developed an interest in teaching. As a welding instructor, Tuttle worries not only about who the next welders will be. He worries about who will be teaching the next generation of welders and whether their students may want to teach someday.

“We just don't have the pipeline to fill those jobs, that’s the thing,” he said.

The latest statistics from the American Welding Society report that 330,000 new welders will be needed by 2028, with 82,500 welding jobs needing to be filled annually.

At La Mirada, Tuttle is trying to address this concern through a unique summer program targeting high schoolers and middle schoolers. Tuttle trains a dozen of his high school students to be teachers and mentors. They learn supervisory skills and take a 10-hour OSHA certification course. Once training is complete, these students then lead a summer welding camp for middle school students; the students leading the camps get paid as well.

The high school camp leaders supervise the younger teens as they work on a small barbeque fabrication project.

Tuttle won a $50,000 Prize for Teaching Excellence from Harbor Freight Tools for Schools in 2020. The prize money went to him and his welding program.

“Some of these middle school kids liked [the camp] so much that they signed up for a second camp,” he said. “For the second-year campers, we introduced a mosaic table project. Now we’re teaching them how to roll metal, bend the legs, do an artsy table. We also taught them a little tiling; we had them do tiling for their tops.”

Tuttle said the summer camp program achieves two things. First, it helps plant the seed into the minds of the high school students to consider a career as a welding instructor. Second, it sparks the interests of kids in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades to consider learning the trades.

Tools for Schools

La Mirada’s summer camp is one of many L.A.-area summer skilled trades programs funded by Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, an initiative of The Smidt Foundation, established by Harbor Freight Tools owner/founder Eric Smidt, to support skilled trades efforts in schools.

Executive Director Danny Corwin said Harbor Freight Tools for Schools promotes and encourages skilled trades programs through initiatives like summer programs, supporting nonprofits with similar missions, and commissioning research studies on the topic of skilled trades education. And according to a recent survey it released which found that most Los Angeles County voters, parents, and students wanted high schools to restore and invest in skilled trades programs like high school welding classes, it’s a mission that is in high demand.

Its largest initiative, though, is its Prize for Teaching Excellence, which awards $1.5 million annually to 25 public high school teachers and their programs.

Tuttle is no stranger to Harbor Freight Tools for Schools, as he was a winner of the Prize for Teaching Excellence for welding in 2020. The recognition included a $50,000 prize, with $15,000 awarded to Tuttle and $35,000 awarded to his program.

“I related to my students on a personal level. Now I still relate but have the experience in life to guide them. I am blessed to have the opportunity to forge the future workforce in welding,” Tuttle said in his biography page on the Prize for Teaching Excellence website.

Corwin said a good portion of the prize-winning educators are welding teachers.

“It’s an honor to recognize them. They often are, as CTE [career and technical education] teachers, not recognized and do not have their own community of peers,” he said. “It’s been wonderful to build a network of these outstanding teachers.”

Corwin called Tuttle an “exceptional” teacher and person. He is the only prize-winning educator from the L.A. area so far, he added.

Among its many initiatives, Harbor Freight Tools for Schools supports a few summer programs in the Los Angeles area.

“He’s got an infectious personality, incredibly enthusiastic. He has a vision for long-term planning with his students,” Corwin said.

Tuttle said he hasn’t touched the winnings yet because of the investments the school district has made to the program. The equipment he has in his shop now rivals or surpasses the equipment found in actual fab shops.

“Sometimes they’ll go from here to work, and they don’t know how to run the machines at their new site because everything we have here is state of the art,” he said. “I'm trying to get a couple of old machines here to help them learn how to use them.”

While the award recognition and the summer program have brought some level of notoriety, Tuttle said he isn’t in it for the recognition. The partnerships he’s created because of the award, though, have proved indispensable.

He’s had a chance to meet other award winners from across the country and dive deeper into how others educate and entice their students to pursue careers in the skilled trades.

“It’s been paid over 10 times, 100 times on that front,” Tuttle said. “Being part of a network of prize-winning teachers throughout the country, I've talked to 16, 17 different welding teachers; I get to see what they do. Everyone teaches welding differently.”

High school welding students mentor and teach middle school students about welding through small fabrication projects during the summer welding program at La Mirada High School.