Myers wins Best of Show at fair's Student Showcase

Five 2017-2018 students taught by Fallbrook High School industrial arts teacher Jacob Bagnell won Best in Class recognition at the San Diego County Fair Student Showcase including Dylan Myers, who took home both Best in Class and Best of Show honors in the General Technology – Special Needs division.

Fallbrook swept the General Technology – Special Needs division with Dylan Livingston also receiving Best in Class honors. The projects of Jacob Hizel, Zach Jones and Dustin Bryant were also given Best in Class distinction.

Myers, who was a junior during the 2017-2018 school year, won Best in Class for first-year students in 10th through 12th grade as well as Best of Show in the General Technology – Special Needs division. Livingston, who was a senior, was given Best in Class for second-year through fourth-year students.

Myers built a robotic arm with a hover sensor.

"He's more of a robotics kid," Bagnell said. "Dylan Myers was more of an electrical engineering kind of kid."

Bagnell taught woodshop and metal shop classes at Fallbrook High School from 2014-2015 to 2016-2017. He continued to teach those classes in 2017-2018 but also partnered with Matthew Eaton to teach a robotics class which integrated Eaton's expertise including electrical and circuit design with Bagnell's mechanical design skills.

Myers took the robotics class.

"He understood a lot of things," Bagnell said.

The hover sensor allows the robotic arm to be moved without touching it.

"The hand moves in all the directions that you're moving," Bagnell said. "You can also make it grab."

Myers designed as well as built the robotic arm.

"He did that all on his own," Bagnell said. "He put it all together. He understood it."

Livingston used a metal inert gas welder and an arc welder to build a bicycle wheel stand.

"He had a real-life situation that he needed help with," Bagnell said.

Livingston rides bicycles with his father.

"They like doing repairs on their own bikes," Bagnell said.

The stand to hold the bicycle wheels allows for work to replace tires.

"It was basically a tool that he made," Bagnell said. "He struggled a lot with it and there were a lot of revisions. He probably learned more with that project than with anything else he's ever done in my class."

The 2017-2018 school year was the fourth in Bagnell's classes for Livingston, who will attend Palomar College during the 2018-2019 school year if he doesn't attend a trade school.

"He was very excited to create something for his father," Bagnell said.

Hizel won Best in Class for first-year students in grades 10 through 12 in the Metals – Welding Process and Machine Work division. Hizel's project was called "The Dining Room Table."

"It was a real creative piece," Bagnell said. "That's what kind of a kid Jacob Hizel is."

The table has an open center surrounded by the table's four legs. Its four different sections allow for four separate linear base segments for further stability on the bottom of the table. The table also has multiple layers on top.

The project was Hizel's first working with wood.

"He didn't know how to work with wood. He's a metal kid," Bagnell said.

The open center was good enough for the table to win Best in Class, but Hizel intended to extend the top of the table.

"He just ran out of time," Bagnell said.

That wasn't due to procrastination but rather due to Hizel's priorities.

"He helps anyone," Bagnell said. "He'll just stop what he's doing and help other people."

Hizel, who graduated in 2018, was in Bagnell's classes for all four of his high school years and allowing younger students to complete simpler projects was more important to Hizel than finishing his own project.

"He taught a couple of younger students how to weld," Bagnell said.

The table was entered in the county fair even though it didn't have wood in the center as Hizel envisioned.

"He had no clue that he would even win," Bagnell said. "He was just excited to be a part of it."

Palomar College is part of Hizel's 2018-2019 plans.

Jones won Best in Class for the General Metal Work division for second-year through fourth-year students. The junior made a guillotine to cut small pieces of wood along with a vise to hold the wood.

"There were so many moving parts to that project," Bagnell said. "He worked to make a wood splitter. Making a wood splitter is a lot harder than you think."

Jones worked with fellow student San Luis Rey Gomez on the project. One of the needs was for the blade to have sufficient weight for the guillotine to split the wood.

"They filled the whole thing with lead," Bagnell said. "You had to pick it up with two hands."

Safety called for the wood not to be held by a human.

"They machined a complete vise from scratch," Bagnell said.

When the project was complete it served its purpose of being able to split small pieces of wood.

"They used about every single machine and tool that is in that shop to make that," Bagnell said.

The 2017-2018 school year was Jones' third with Bagnell.

Bryant won his Best in Class in the Fine Arts competition rather than the General Technology competition; he was given Best in Class for second-year through fourth-year students who entered the Other 3-D, Not Listed division. Bryant built a metal log out of recycled pipe which had been used as for a previous welding project.

"We enter the most random stuff in the art section," Bagnell said.

Bryant cut the pipe with an oxyacetylene torch and then arc welded the metal.

"He's probably the best welder that's ever come out of Fallbrook High School," Bagnell said.

Not only does the pipe look like a log, but the sculpture also has a tree with an owl.

The ability to make such artwork out of pipe interested the other students. "It got kids wanting to try it and they started learning how difficult it is," Bagnell said.

The 2018 graduation ended Bryant's Fallbrook High School career as a student. He took automotive technology as a freshman before spending three years in Bagnell's classes.

"Dustin has done a lot of stuff for the shop," Bagnell said.

During his senior year Bryant was also a state qualifier in the Skills USA competition.

Bryant plans to spend the 2018-2019 academic year at Palomar College. He aspires to become an industrial arts teacher.

"He may end up having my job one day," Bagnell said.

The concept of a successor pleases Bagnell.

"It's really exciting for me," he said. "There needs to be another generation of this."

The 2017-2018 school year was Bagnell's fifth at Fallbrook High School and his ninth as a teacher. He began his teaching career in Northern California as a biology teacher and taught in San Marcos before Fallbrook High School the reinstated wood shop and metal shop classes, and Bagnell successfully applied for the position.

"It's a really cool place to teach," Bagnell said.

His duties included rebuilding the school's industrial arts program as well as teaching students.

"We've worked really, really hard to get the equipment," Bagnell said.

Bagnell began entering students in the San Diego County Fair in 2015.

"I just appreciate all the people that do it. The county fair, they just put on an awesome show," Bagnell said of the fair's Student Showcase staff. "A lot of people go to the county fair just to see our projects."

Bagnell's students entered 40 projects in the 2018 county fair.

"They all did really well," he said. "It was a really good year."

When Bagnell started, Fallbrook was the only high school with industrial arts entries, and Fallbrook also had the most general technology entries of any high school in the 2016 and 2017 county fairs.

"Now there's like seven different schools doing it. It's pretty awesome to see how the whole county has changed," Bagnell said. "It's cool to see the change."

Although the projects from other schools could be considered competition at the county fair, the purpose of industrial arts classes is to provide employment and hobby skills for students so Bagnell is appreciative of the growth of industrial arts programs at the Student Showcase.

"It was really cool to see other schools taking on these projects as well," he said. "That was a really neat thing to see."

Two of Bagnell's 2017-2018 students who won Best in Class awards for the county fair in previous years did not repeat their awards, but potential employers are attracted by mere county fair participation.

"It just shows motivation at a young age," Bagnell said. "Best is an extra bonus. Just showing up is a big part of it."

National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, which has a shipyard in San Diego, thinks highly enough of Bagnell's welding students that NASSCO is willing to hire any student who desires a NASSCO welding position.

"That's one big accomplishment that we made this last year," Bagnell said. "Every kid this year that graduated that wanted a job was able to get one."

Some of Bagnell's 2017-2018 seniors chose trade school or community college opportunities and others have been hired elsewhere in the industrial community, but NASSCO hired eight seniors this year.

"Eight is not bad for our first year with them," Bagnell said.