Auto classes prepare students for life in and out of the shop

PHOTO: Students work on a vehicle

By Jackson Chelius

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

Junior Eli Burnam takes off the drain plug and prepares to drain the oil from a car suspended above him. The oil spills out into the oil container. Other students watch as they have already completed their research on the oil change. They learned what type of oil and how much is needed for the specific car. 

Leading the operation is Robert Thayer, who has been teaching auto shop at Davis High since 2006. The class offers skills that you can’t get anywhere else on the DHS campus and could be used to get a job in the field after high school. 

“I was always interested in cars, but I didn’t grow up in a mechanical family,” Thayer said. He got his first job as a mechanic from a friend at an auto shop. “I didn’t have any formal training which made it hard for me,” Thayer said. Despite this, he stuck with it and got a job at a dealership where he stayed for nine years before switching to teaching. 

“I felt like there was a little something lacking in my life and wanted more community,” Thayer said. After discussing it with his wife who is a teacher, Thayer decided to try it out. In 2006 he began teaching at DHS and has slowly been building up the program since then.

There are three different types of students who take auto shop, according to Thayer. “There’s students that just need a class and aren’t very interested in the subject initially, students who are interested in cars and the subject but don’t want to go into the industry and a small percentage who know they want to work in the industry after high school,” Thayer said.

Senior Sebastian Moreno falls into that last category of students. “I’m planning on majoring in mechanical engineering so the class has been a great introduction to what’s probably going to be my career,” Moreno said.

Moreno is in the Advanced Auto class and is now able to do a lot of servicing skills himself and use what he’s learned out of class. “I’ve helped two people change their tires besides from changing my own,” Moreno said.

Junior Evan Lanier is currently in Basic Auto. “I heard great things from my friends and the school about it so I decided to try it,” Lanier said. So far, he’s really enjoyed it. “The class really breaks up the monotony of the day because you’re getting up and working with your hands on the cars,” Lanier said.

Lanier thinks that he will continue the class and take Advanced Auto shop next year. “In Advanced (Auto) you can bring in your own projects and I’d like to bring in a project car and work on it with all the tools and equipment they have to offer,” Lanier said.

Former DHS student Saul Ramirez took the auto classes offered at DHS and is now working in the automotive industry. Ramirez always had an interest in cars and the auto shop class continued to push him towards the goal of becoming a technician. “I loved that class so much, one year I decided to double up and take two different auto classes,” Ramirez said. 

“Mr Thayer was one of my favorite teachers in high school and always helped me in whatever I was working on,” Ramirez said. After graduating, he enrolled in the Universal Technical Institute. Ramirez now works at Hanlees Toyota in Davis. 

Each class provides a different learning experience, keeping the class fresh for returners. In Basic Auto, the students study the theory concepts at home, and then apply them in the shop during the class. The class then changes for students taking Advanced Auto. “Advanced Auto is run like a mock business, where we have clients or customers that bring cars to us and we fix them as if we were an actual car business,” Thayer said. 

Lastly, in the Electrical Vehicle and Build class, students spend the year putting together cars. “It’s basically a giant class project where we fully take the cars apart and then spend the rest of the time putting them back together into fully running cars,” Thayer said. 

Thayer believes the skills offered by auto shop will be beneficial to everyone. “Subjects like friction, thermal dynamics and electrical theory are all very transferable to other fields,” Thayer said. He believes that if you have a familiarity with tools and working on cars, you will be able to look at pretty much anything and have a good chance of fixing it.“

(The skills) are very useful just being a consumer. The more you know about a car, the better experience you’re going to have buying a car, owning a car and selling a car,” Thayer said.