One of the problems I've been running into for the past year and a half is the dwindling number of enrolled students who have any work ethic at all. I've had to fail more students over the past year and a half than ever before - they're lazy, they don't show up for class, they leave early at just about every opportunity, they don't finish their worksheets, and I can't trust them to do live work. My mantra is P.A.I.D., i.e., Performance, Attitude, Integrity, and Dependability, and I'm finding and a lot of the students I've enrolled tend to be dreadfully lacking in more than one of those four areas. When I pass out a sheet so they can grade themselves, they even give themselves lousy marks in those areas! Yesterday I was visiting a tire store and the manager was miffed because his newest employee, a green 19 year-old, didn't show up for work, and when he finally got the kid to come in, the excuse was "Dad didn't wake me up and my alarm clock didn't go off." Crappy excuse, but it dovetails with a lot of my students' excuses. Not only am I having to teach them automotive, I'm having to teach them how to work, and I can only do that when they'll show up and stay all day. I have a few good ones, but it seems like for every one good one I have, I have two that never learned responsibility at home. I have one student who is capable but irresponsible - his mother gives him money for everything he needs, and all he's interested in is tinkering with his hot rod - he couldn't care less about the Blazer sitting on the lift that should have been finished three weeks ago. The good ones make a lot of the headaches worthwhile - they can really perform, but I have to watch them very close to make sure the poor work ethic demonstrated by the others doesn't rub off on them.

I can get 'em financial help - I just need better quality students, and in our area, the aviation college is siphoning off a lot of them, promising high paying jobs that require very little work - some of the ones who go to work just wash helicopters and play dominoes all day while getting 20+ bucks an hour, and that seems to resonate with a lot of today's youth, particularly in our area. Automotive work is work, and too many of them aren't interested in real work that requires a real commitment.