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Pilla worked as a mechanical engineer at Lockheed Martin before switching to teaching. “I didn’t have enough experience working on and planning out a really big project,”

That’s what he tries to give his students in high school.

When students newer to making come in excited to take on a project, the old hands help them get up to speed on the skills. And a lot of those projects are about improving the school itself.

Tiarra Bell, a senior at SLA Center City. Design drew her into engineering. She experimented with architecture and industrial design, but has really become passionate about furniture design. She now makes and sells her own furniture.

Kamal and Pilla meet with an advisory group of engineering industry professionals periodically to make sure their program is truly equipping students with the skills they’ll need to go into these fields later

The experts say students need to be able to write, to find problems, to communicate, to Google, to understand constraints. They need to be creative, take thoughtful risks and have a “fearlessness to leap.

robotics, senior engineering, astronomy and space sciences, MakerSpace, electronics and programming)

To me it’s not about becoming an engineer in college or after. It’s about the critical thinking and the challenges and the creativity that comes with it,”

Because my high school offered auto mechanics as part of a region-wide vocational program, I thought I could add that onto my course load with some careful maneuvering of classes. The problem was, I was a strong student academically. And the part of New York where I'm from, like many other places, separated students into academic versus vocational training tracks — and never the twain shall meet

just because someone studies to be a car mechanic doesn't mean they won't love Shakespeare or calculus is just as silly as assuming that someone headed to college doesn't need to know how to fix a car.

but I never really "use" trigonometry either

vocational programs for everyone would allow academically oriented kids to find new hobbies or new ways to solve problems, and would also destigmatize the jobs that they're connected to — which are necessary, interesting and challenging. There's more than one path to success

In this phase, it’s important to identify the small, obtainable skills that could become the building blocks of growth.

2. Emulation Phase

Which “mentor works” of my heroes should I immerse myself in, and emulate, in order to build my skills?

3. Divergence Phase

when you begin to take everything you’ve learned, and bend and break the rules you learned during emulation.

4. Crisis Phase

Perhaps everyone around you is perfectly fine with your performance, but deep down you know that you’re no longer striving to sharpen your craft, and you’ve grown stagnant.

We will cycle through these general phases many times over the course of our lives and careers, but for the greatest artists the process of growth never ends.

I had unwittingly reached a point where the effort became an asset.

the benefits outweigh the struggle

So, how do we push ourselves through this “pre-knack” period when the short-term calculus doesn’t seem to add up?

That means our job is not only to teach our students the skills and tools for their practice, but also to inspire and set into motion a practice that gets them past that tipping point, where the ability becomes part of them and they couldn’t imagine not putting it to use.