Career Technical Training
Shifting Gears, USA
CAPP Car Appreciation and Preservation Program
Each year Shifting Gears, USA generates money for philanthropic donations for worthy causes. Three years ago, we decided to focus on a new worthy cause: an education program which addresses a growing community need for craftsmen and craftswomen trained in both modern skills to repair automobiles and artisan techniques to restore and preserve the vintage, classic and exotic cars. We partnered with the Marin County Office of Education and developed a curriculum called Car Appreciation and Preservation Program (CAPP), to be run in high schools. Fully accredited by the California Department of Education, our program ran in a Marin County high school for 18 weeks in the 2019 fall semester with 26 students and again in the 2019 winter semester with 20 students. To watch these young folks enthusiastically come to an evening class each week was truly gratifying. A telling and fun example of their enthusiasm was captured in the answer of a young woman student, with grease covered hands, to a question about why she was not wearing gloves like everyone else: “I get a better feel for the parts and the tools without gloves”.
Covid came and we were shut down until the fall of 2022. Two successful semesters followed, and we are now into our third-class year with our 2023 winter semester class having just finished. Our class has brought to focus the fact that in recent years technical training has all but been eliminated in Marin high school education. Our class has inspired a new look at this need for technical training for high school students and the the Marin County School Office of Education has dedicated the Terra Linda campus to become a Career Technical Training Center, with our CAPP class as its first program. It is expected that within a few years as many as 15 or more technical programs will be offered. We have also had inquiries from people from other areas who have heard of our program. We freely pass on our organizational and curriculum information to help others start programs and spread our car message. Thanks to all of us who participate in the rallies, our entry fee donations have provided a significant part of the funding for the CAPP program. We also received incredible support from our local commercial car community in the form of cash, the donation of tools and parts and providing some hands-on experience in their shops that enabled us to buy floor standing toolboxes with full mechanics tool sets and a steel shipping container to house them; we secured old engines, transmissions, front and rear end assemblies, and many other car parts.
Our Shifting Gears revenues barely cover the basics of the program and additional support is needed from the car community with mutual interest in creating an environment for young people to learn about cars and experience them with the joy and the benefits that we have all appreciated so much.
We would welcome your participation with us either through direct donations to the to a dedicated CTE account, care of the Marin County Superintendent of Schools, or through in-kind donations of equipment, class participation, work internships or any other contributing resource.
Thank you,
Tom O’Neill – Founder of the Tiburon Classic Car Show, Co-Founder of the CAPP program with
Charlie Goodman and Board Members of Shifting Gears USA, the sponsoring organization of this program.
