WMABA School Profile: Frederick County Career & Technology Center

by Chasidy Rae Sisk

While some collision repair technology instructors struggle to fill their classrooms, Philip Allen – auto body instructor at Frederick County Career & Technology Center (CTC) in Frederick, MD – laments the inability to accept every student interested in his program!

The two-year program admits 18 new students each year, and when Allen began teaching at CTC in January 2019, “student interest and retention was a problem” with only 22 students filling the 36 available slots. During that year’s Shadowing Program, where ninth and 10th grade students from the county’s 12 high schools “shadow our programs for a class period to see if they’re interested in taking one of the many courses that we have to offer,” Allen struggled to obtain 18 new applications for the following school year but is “happy to say that interest and retention are no longer an issue.”

In fact, he received 54 applications last year and 81 applications the year before. “The increased interest in my program both excites and saddens me,” Allen says. “I wish there was a way to expand the program so we could accept more students, but staffing and the size of our facility does not allow it.”

While Allen would like to credit the change to “current students telling their friends about what an awesome teacher I am,” he acknowledges that the COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on every school nationwide. During the shutdown, a large number of teachers, parents and students begged to return to in-person instruction, and since teachers of “hands-on” courses were struggling to teach virtually, leading to students not getting the instruction they signed up for, technical education students were one of the first groups to return to in-person instruction.

“Since then, many parents and students seem to be more interested in receiving instruction in the trades that were deemed essential during the shut down. Ever since the pandemic, I’ve had no problem filling our class.”

Second-year students at CTC attend class for two hours each morning, while first-year students receive instruction in the afternoons. As soon as a student begins the program, they have access to the school’s work-based learning coordinator and career coach who help them prepare for interviews and with job placement. Toward the end of the first year, students with room in their schedule can choose to participate in a work-study or internship program, spending half the day at school and the other half earning a paycheck at a local shop where they further hone their skills. 

Prior to becoming a CTC instructor, Allen worked as an insurance appraiser for 15 years, and during that time, he cultivated good relationships with many local repair facilities. “I would get asked on a weekly – and sometimes daily – basis if I knew anyone looking for a job. Building those relationships back then with shop owners and managers has helped me with placing students in a career situation that benefits them and the shop.”

CTC’s auto body program’s success can also be attributed to its active advisory board which consists of local collision repair businesses, insurance industry professionals, a local paint rep and previous program graduates. The board meets two or three times each school year, and Allen leans “heavily on them to support the program with recommendations and advice on curriculum needs, tool and equipment purchases, budget need support and spreading the word about our program. They play a huge role in obtaining and continually meeting the requirements to be an ASE accredited program, which we just renewed this past October. 

“My advisory members are also a huge help when it comes to recruitment,” he adds. “Each October, we host an open house for prospective students and their families to come in and see the school and ask questions. Several of my board members set up tables in our shop and help with this process; it is a huge help to have other professionals here to represent our program. Members of my advisory board also come in each year to judge my local SkillsUSA competition.”

Of course, Allen still faces challenges as an instructor. One of the largest hurdles is adjusting his expectations and teaching style based on the fact that every student learns at a different pace. “Students come from every background imaginable,” he explains. “At one end of the spectrum, you have students who may have a parent in the automobile business, or students who may have helped work on cars in a parent’s or friend’s garage. On the other end of that spectrum is the student who has never held a tool in their hand. As a teacher, you have to figure out how to deliver instruction to all of your students and keep the entire classroom of diverse learners engaged, without letting some students get bored while I spend additional time with others.”

Along those same lines, instructors must figure out how to modify curriculum designed for experienced industry professionals in a way that allows inexperienced high schoolers to comprehend it. “Until this year, our program used I-CAR’s curriculum, which we all know is not designed to entertain and engage a teenager. This past summer, I-CAR released their new I-CAR Academy, which is designed with tech schools in mind. Coursework is chunked up more than in the old curriculum; most courses take less than 40 minutes to work through. While we’ve only had this new I-CAR curriculum for a couple months, it’s showing promise,” Allen praises. 

Despite the challenges, Allen feels that his job is very rewarding as he is able to “contribute positively to my students’ growth. My main goal with every one of my students is for them to be successful at something after they graduate. I obviously push and suggest pretty hard that they enter the collision repair industry, but we all know that it’s difficult to settle on a career when 16 or 17 years old.”

To help students with this, he runs the program like a typical shop where he is the manager and they are his employees. He develops an open and honest relationship with his students, and once that relationship is established, “the real learning begins. Once I get to know my students, I can get a better idea of their individual needs and understand which direction to take to make them light up. When I see that light come on, it’s the most gratifying part of the job!”

Allen encourages his students to master three things during CTC’s two-year program: “to use all of their resources to solve problems, to safely and efficiently use their hands and tools and to develop a good and solid work ethic aimed at helping themselves and others be successful. I explain that, if they master these three things, they will be successful at whatever they choose to do in life.”

Want more? Check out the January 2025 issue of Hammer & Dolly!