Student Awards are for Teachers too

Australian Wood Review's Student Awards 2018 are open for entry to Australian secondary students in years 11 and 12. Last year, two awards were taken out by students from The King's School, Parramatta, NSW. The pieces made by Ben Selig and Jack Taylor were creative designs which spoke of complex development and construction processes. For some insights on how their award winning results were achieved Wood Review Editor Linda Nathan spoke to their teacher, Jayden Taccori, The King's School, Sydney.

AWR: Jayden, congratulations again on the success of two of your students in 2017 Student Awards. For Ben Selig to be judged as Overall Best, and for Jack Taylor to create the Best Design is a great compliment to you as their teacher. Neither student took the easy way out – both pieces are very complex constructions. Did you ever feel like they’d bitten off more than they could chew?

JT: Thanks Linda! Both boys were bright, motivated and highly committed to seeing the project out, so I can confidently say that I never really had any doubts that they could accomplish their goals. There were, however, certainly times when other people looked at their progress (or more the apparent lack of) and had their reservations. But due to the complexities of both Ben and Jack’s designs, they spent most of their time quietly working away in the background, analysing quality elements of design, making templates and jigs, and doing extensive testing and prototyping. In many ways putting the project together at the end was the easy bit.

AWR: How do you help students to come up with design ideas for their major projects?

JT: First of all, I like to have a discussion with them about what they wish to get out of the subject? Do they want to make a ‘wow’ project? Do they want to top the state? Do they just want to survive the next year? How many hours are they realistically willing to devote to their project? Do they have a need for something in particular? What are their existing limitations? All of these questions help influence what path they might start to take.

Once we sort out these preliminary questions, I then urge them to find as many pictures as possible of projects, or parts of projects that they like. I want them to look through as many past student projects, specialty magazines, Instagram, Pinterest, Google images and retail shops as possible for inspiration. Once they create an annotated collage of all of their design ideas it’s time to grab a pencil and paper to start sketching and combing some of these ideas. I try to encourage most students to not ‘reinvent the wheel’, but rather tweak an existing design to make it their own. In this early stage, I don’t want students restricting their design by worrying about how they will build it, that is something that is revisited a little later on.

AWR: What is the most important thing that a teacher can do for students who are tasked with producing creative, challenging and well documented major projects in their final year?

JT: I am a strong believer that the most outstanding projects and folios are almost always born from projects with a heavy innovative design focus. By encouraging students to come up with their own unique project design it then creates the essential building blocks for genuine and meaningful design development, testing, evaluating, prototyping and modelling, and it will naturally lead to a highly demanding project, involving challenges, problems and necessary solutions.

Building a classic project like a guitar or grandfather clock, although challenging in their own right, have a clearly defined, well tested and proven path one should take to successfully complete it. This creates a ‘glass ceiling’, restricting possible depth of challenge, creativity and documentation. I also believe in adding complementary materials, for example, adding some small metal features to a timber project can really take its overall look to a different level.

AWR: Can you tell us a little about your background? Where did you learn your woodworking and design skills?

JT: I spent the first 23 years of my life living in a log cabin home, and so I think I passively learnt so much about timber properties and characteristics by just observing it over such a long period of time.

I always followed and helped my dad around the house, in high school I had three fantastic Technology teachers and did work experience with a builder. I then went on to work for a while with a carpenter and builder, both of whom were huge perfectionists. I studied Industrial Arts teaching at University and have since designed, taught and built a wide variety of projects, both in and out of Australia.

I have been fortunate enough to have spent the last few years soaking up the great depth of expertise and experience of my colleagues at my current school.

AWR: What is the best thing about being a technology teacher? Have you learnt anything from your students?

JT: One of the things I enjoy most about teaching is being able to take the time to enjoy the journey of designing and making a project, from start to finish with a student. Out in the real world, time is money, and so many processes are rushed and can’t be appreciated. Students bring so much fun, laughter and variety to work every day.

My students teach me all the time about design, as the more I learn about the elements of good design, the more a matter of opinion I believe it becomes and students are rarely short of an opinion.

AWR: What’s your best bit of advice for D&T and IT students in Years 11 and 12 in 2018?

JT: I can’t stress enough how important it is to order your materials and start building, testing and experimenting within a couple of weeks of year 12. There is always a solution to any problem, but there will be no solution if there isn’t enough time.

Sit down with your teacher very early on and use their experience to guide you to set realistic milestones for your project. If/when you miss a milestone, put in the hard work immediately to ensure you catch up before the next one. Far too many students are super slow to get motivated early on, fall behind, don’t fully appreciate what is ahead of them and then make critical mistakes in the dash to the finish line.

For Industrial Technology, work out what your personal goals are for the subject. If you want to create a very impressive project, but you would like to reduce the challenges involved, then I would highly recommend heavily basing your project off existing plans and instructions.

Photos of Jayden Taccori and students at The Kings School, Parramatta, NSW are shown in the gallery above.

AWR Student Awards 2018 are open for entry now at www.woodreview.com.au/student-awards. Entries to date may also be viewed here. Some tips for 2018 entrants are at this link. We also spoke to each of last winners about their major project journeys. You can read that story here.

AWR Student Awards 2018 are proudly sponsored by: