Ep 153 | Welding: Sparking young minds

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Because from my eyes, and I have four of them.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

It's wearing glasses, boys and girls. I'm wearing glasses.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

I'm wearing glasses. What I see is there is a lot of kids, they're not bad kids. They just need some direction and some understanding on how to get from point A to point B. And if I can lead by example, and here's a phrase that I tell my students, you can ask any of my students at the high school. I tell them to lead by example, don't be the example.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every student in Escambia County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. When it comes to changing a student's life for the better, you might say there are two magic ingredients: someone to believe in you to give you hope and an opportunity to give you traction. My next guest is doing both of those things. He's the welding instructor at Pensacola High School, and today he's going to share how he went from welding at a major corporation to becoming the cornerstone of the PHS welding program and how one skill is building multiple opportunities, bringing real-world experience to the textbooks and options to the next generation, Joseph Moss. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

So who put you on the path of welding?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

I have an older brother, and I looked up to him and he was a welder, and I was a troubled, I would I wasn't a bad kid, but I wasn't a good kid either. I didn't like school. And just like a lot of the kids nowadays. And he said, Either you're gonna go to school or you're gonna go on the road with me. And he changed my life for the better at a very, very young age. And I went to work and the rest is history after that.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

So that's how you uh started and then eventually became a welding superintendent?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Well, I got my first certification at 17. Traveled for the next 20 years, and my first foreman job, I was 20 24, and I went from foreman to superintendent. And from the superintendent job, I worked a job in Missouri. It was a power plant job for Amber UV. It's called Johnson Shut ins and it's Tom Salk. And when we got done with that job, it was a five-year job. The company that was over the job wanted to start a fabricating division, and it just flourished and kept flourishing. Then they moved us to Colorado, and I was got to start from the ground up at a fabrication shop, got to hire my own people, and it just flourished and flourished and flourished. Just from one arc, one weld. I didn't realize at that point in time what it could lead to, but I do now. And that's I'm trying to get to these kids that what it can lead to. It doesn't have to be that smart. It could be an engineer, it can be a a welding superintendent. There's it's the spider web from the superintendent job. I was working another job in Minneapolis. It was another power plant job in what they called pin stock, a 66-inch pipe, and we were putting all the pipe, me and my crew were putting all the pipe in, and that pipe feeds the water to the turbine. The turbine turns, it creates electricity. And my wife, she knew that that was my end goal, but I didn't want to ever want to put myself out there to be a welding instructor until I knew, without a doubt, I could benefit the people that would be underneath me and that would be in my classes. And she put my resume in, and next thing you know, I'm getting an interview, and I fumbled my words and they said my resume looked real good, and I did a little teaching. I never taught before in a classroom, and I went from being the a pipe instructor to the lead pipe instructor to the educational supervisor, and here I am.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

That's quite a contrast where your brother is giving you this ultimatum because you're so misbehaving in school to now being a teacher that and the job that you left was quite a a good paying job.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Oh yeah. It was a very good paying job. I mean, it was you're talking salary-wise. They I had company truck, I had three three company phones, I had two company laptops, it was travel, travel, travel. The company I was working for was basically worldwide. At the time we had over 30 different jobs going on in the United States, and my job was just to look at all the specs to make for sure each job that had anything to do with welding that they would have the right metal, the right certifications. I'll put this in perspective for you. I went to a job in from Colorado, Pueblo West. They were behind, and the job site superintendent ordered a whole bunch of two-inch schedule 10 stainless. It's real thin stainless. Well, in the specs, it's fine detail. In the specs, it said 316 stainless. They got 304 stainless. The state inspector was gonna let them put that in, and then they would have to take it back out on their own dump. That's what I end up doing with that company. And next thing you know, that's how I made a name for myself with that company was situations like that.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

Well, it's very cushy benefits compared to your first job. You said the first teaching job, what was it like? An hour commute one way and barely paying your bills kind of salary?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

It well, I went from oh, probably $120,000, $130,000 a year to $19.62 an hour.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

That's so bad.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

And I was driving $127.3 miles one way.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

One way?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

One way.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

So more than an hour one way.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Lived in Pueblo and it was off of I-70, it was Lincoln Tech in Denver.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

I've never met someone who wanted to be a teacher thus bad.

SPEAKER_00 7:01

I did that, I did that for six months, and I was teaching doubles and triples.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

And there was such a fire in me at that point in time. I probably had within them six months, I had veterans.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

I had because this was an adult college.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

It was a college. And there was a a Merrill Lynch investment banker that retired and he bought a ranch up in Boulder and he wanted to learn how to weld on his ranch. So it it was to this day, out of that six months, I still get phone calls. Every week I get at least 10 phone calls, and it's always from different students.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

From that class?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

From that six months. I had over a hundred students that I was teaching in that time.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

And it was your first class, and they still keep in touch with you.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Oh, yeah. The way I taught the class was is how I ran a crew and how I set up a crew and how I would set up a job. And that's how I ran the class. The bookwork was foreign to me, and they had to have what they call asynchronous, it's homework, but in college they call it asynchronous work. They had to have at least eight hours. Now that was something that my wife and a couple of my students helped me with to set up. But the hands-on and the functionality of jobs, that's how I taught that class. And that's how they learned.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

So you brought a degree of credibility because what was on the page was what you lived. And so they were probably extra tuned in, especially adults, because as you said, they had this immediate need. I need to weld this thing on my farm. I need to change careers. So they had a sense of urgency and your real life experience was exactly what they needed.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yes. And then take this, for instance. In the book, it said that you can run a weave beef, five rods, the width of five welding rods. I know it don't make a lot of sense to a lot of people, but the welding rods is what you weld with. But the book was saying you can do a weave beeve back and forth, five welding rods width, and you can still be within any welding code. The structural code D1.8, which is a bridge code, is seismic, and that's a lie. And I explained to the class, and the reason why it was is because if you go any wider than three, then you're putting too much heat into your metal and you're crystallizing the metal. And it's going to more likely crack out. And another thing, an inspector sees anything over three, they're going to flunk the weld. And then you won't have a job, and then you won't be able to pay bills, because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Yeah, they won't care that, well, that's what my textbook, chapter five, said that.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Right. And then they're going to be like, Mr. Moss, why didn't you tell me?

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah. So tell me about when you started teaching at the high school level, because you shared with me that your main reason for that was to kind of close the gap of work ethic that you've seen. Why do you feel it's possible to have a noticeable impact on work ethic through a welding class?

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Because from my eyes, and I have four of them.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

He's wearing glasses, boys and girls. I'm wearing glasses.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

I'm wearing glasses. What I see is there is a lot of kids, they're not bad kids. They just need some direction and some understanding on how to get from point A to point B. And if I can lead by example, and here's a phrase that I tell my students, you can ask any of my students at the high school. I tell them to lead by example, don't be the example.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

And if I can show them what work ethic can do, it doesn't matter if it's in welding, and you can be a janitor, you can be anything, anything. Because you have to show up. You have to perform. And they know if they show up and perform, they will learn. A lot of them are buying into it, but the ones that aren't, they're still not bad kids. They don't want to have nothing to do with any sparks. And and I'm gonna run across that.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

Do they know your story?

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Some of them do. I come from uh generational poverty. Me and my wife do. And that's one of the reasons I am the way I am with work ethic, because I know if these kids can understand not just saying the word, you need good work ethic, for them truly to understand what that means and what that can bring. I know they're gonna be alright. I know they'll be fine no matter what they do in life.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Do you think welding is for everyone?

SPEAKER_00 11:57

No, I don't. Do I think I can teach welding to anybody? No. Do I push it on everybody? No. I have students that don't like to weld at all. So guess what they're truly learning? They're truly learning on how the inner workings of a horizontal bandsaw works. They're they're working on the plasma, understanding, okay, how much pressure do we have to have before it throws a break or this, and that's what they're truly learning. They're truly learning the ins and outs on fabrication. And I've noticed the I have some students that don't like to weld, but they love just in love with the torch, cutting, measuring and cutting, measuring and cutting. So I'll give them, I said, okay, I want a piece at four, four inch, four and nine sixteenths. Yes, sir, and they'll go cut me one, clean it up, and it has to be exactly at four and nine sixteenths. That didn't happen overnight because cutting with a torch, an oxyacelly torch, it could be real messy real, real quick. And if you're not careful, you're gonna cut way too much out, you're gonna go crooked. So I try to meet all of my students where they're at, but still show them and try to let them understand what work ethic is.

SPEAKER_02 13:25

So tell me more about your students.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

I got a kid before the welding program started, he would show up to school, jump the fence, never show up, never do none of his work. He was pretty much fisting to go to juvie. He was a handful at first because you have to earn his trust and he's lived a hard life at a young age. But we worked through the hard s times and that kid reminds me so much of myself when I was his age because he's such a hard worker. He didn't know what to put that energy into until now. And by God, when he really bought into showing up and putting the work in and understanding what work ethic truly is. That kid, he he has four certifications.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Is it unusual for a kid to have that many certs?

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Oh yes. It's an outlier. It is. And to have it two and a half years in the program, it just blows my mind because all that in two and a half years, he's not even a senior? No.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Wow. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

And just to get him started on pipe, he's a junior now. I've been flabbergasted because I know what it takes to learn pipe and truly understand because you're not just with pipe, you're not just setting your test up and welded. You have to understand your specs. You have to understand, okay, I can't allow no more than a sixteenth on the reinforcement. I can't allow no more than a sixteenth on the right side. And it there's just a lot more to it. Instead of with structural, it's just your elbow. You're just operating your elbow. With pipe, you're operating your elbow, your wrist, and your body. So it's it just blows my mind.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

So what kind of job opportunities would be opening up for a kid like him after graduation that wouldn't be available otherwise?

SPEAKER_00 15:30

He could go on the road and work. He could go to a lot of the fabrication shops here in town, and they're gonna see them certs. He's gonna have to certify with the company with their code. But there's not he don't have to tell them, well, I did this, I did that, they're gonna be like, you're young. Proofs in the search. Because companies know it it takes work to get that. There's you don't have to talk about it, it's there. And he's not gonna have to do a lot of talking.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Because it's more than just showing up, as opposed to like any maybe a less motivated student, you know, someone might look at their resume and go, oh, well, you did this program. They both did the program. But what stands out about him is he has all these certifications. So that's kind of like the proof.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Correct. And he don't it you don't have to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

You can be about it.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

It's that's it. And companies know if they see that he's a young kid, still green behind the ears, that means he has a lot of learning to do. But they know that he's a worker. They know that if he's a worker, okay, come on. We'll hire you. We'll put some time and money into you. And that's all that's all I'm asking for the kids. All the kids at in the program, they know the certification. All that does for them is they don't have to talk. They don't say, I did this, I did that. That certification just shows that, hey, this kid's a worker and he has to have good work ethic because or he wouldn't have it.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

He or she wouldn't have it. And that's the great thing about this program because the program pays for their certification.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

That's brilliant. It makes so much sense to me. So thankfully, there's someone like you who can help kids see, okay, this is a way to, if you're like, like you shared, you're from generational poverty. And if those kids relate to that, which a lot of kids in our county do, you know, most of our schools are Title I schools. So they might go, oh, wow, if Mr. Moss can do it, I can do it. And here's how I can do it. And I never have to convince anyone that I can do it because I have these certifications. I wanted to ask you though, are most of the job opportunities after graduation with certifications in the direction of physically welding, or is it one of those things that it could open up something less expected?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

It's like a spider web. Just take this, for instance, a student can graduate, go to a fabrication place here in town, the company sees that the that's the kid shows up, it's a hard worker, next thing you know, they're putting them through classes for a QC, a quality control, putting them through more classes on using a sub art, which is uh robot welding, a submerged arc. And it's the sky's the limit. And they're the keepers of that. And I'm trying for them to see that because when I was their age, people could talk to me. I was very respectful, but it didn't resonate. So I'm trying to resonate for them to see that they're the keeper of it and it starts with the work ethic. It starts showing up on time. Even if like today they're doing a lot of testing. Some of the kids are seniors. They just like, well, I'm not gonna come in in the morning.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

I said, Why not? 'Cause they have senioritis.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

Yeah, and they're like, Well, I don't I don't have to test and this and that. I said, I'll tell you what, I made a deal with one kid and because he was needing a rod for his fishing pole. So I brought a rod in this morning. The kid showed up. I'm trying for them to I'm trying to connect what it takes to make it in the real world. And I tell my kids all the time, I said, I the last thing I want you to do is get in life. Life will beat you up. Stress about paying the rent, either pay your rent or get groceries. I said, You want to st you want to be able to go to the grocery store, buy your groceries, pay your rent, and not have to look at see how much money. And it starts here. Bottom line, it starts here. And I'm trying, and there's been quite a few students. I had one student uh yesterday he was taking pictures with me. He's on the spectrum a little, he's a great kid. He's been with me for two years. Just got him to the point where on his threes he is practicing to take his 3G plate test. And he kept messing up. We kept going over it, kept going over it, and about a month ago, he finally s seen what he needed to see, and it totally made sense. His toes was wetted in, it was flat, he wasn't trapping slack. He got done, wire wheeled it, and I said, I'm so proud of you. And he just turns around, lifts his hood up, he goes, I love you, Mr. Boss. And it just after that, he's taxes played up, he don't have any it's like now he can help his classmates with trap and slag or burning too hot for them to understand it if I don't say the right word, because we're all a little different too. I students help other students and it makes sense to them to where Mr. Moss don't make sense. And I get that.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Do you have any girls in your class?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

I do. There's another one that just blows me away. She was in my class this morning before she was going to test. She's a ninth grader. She has four different projects going on at once right now. She brought in an old water fountain, it's like a hundred and something years old. We've been working on that. She's been making two birds out of spoons, forks, and knives. They're phenomenal. They look great. But with her, I don't even know how to put it in words because with her, she just gets it. It's she totally understands. I say something to her once, she does it. She's already certified. And she's been working on her open route, and she's doing great on that. And then I had the Valley Victorian up in Scola High School this year. Female, male, if it's in them, it's in them.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

That's incredible. It sounds like you're in the exact right place that you need to be. And this is this is the only dedicated welding program in the high schools in Escambia County. And so I wanted to ask you if there was ever an opportunity for another one to start up, would you ever teach teachers? Is that ever in your radar?

SPEAKER_00 22:40

I've I've done at that at the college. Uh taught pipe instructors on I guess how to take what they've done in the field in real life and put it into action where it makes sense. Because I'm gonna tell you right now, you open up a code book or you open up a WPS and your welding procedure, it's it's boring stuff. You know, it's very boring. But when you put dollar signs on stuff, it it kind of gets you fired up.

SPEAKER_02 23:10

Yeah. It seems like you have a knack for that motivational piece, you know. Because really that's what it boils down to is that human behavior. And that determines what our what our futures are. And you're making such a a beautiful and and real difference in the lives of of Pensacola kids. So for that, we all thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Well, I'm gonna do it until they don't let me, or like I tell my kids, it I'm gonna be here until they don't let me, or I go to the spirit world. I say, but if I go to the spirit world, I'll still be there in your arm when you're welding.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Oh. So I can't think of a better way to wrap this up. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and share. Voices United in Education is a production of Scambie County Public Schools.