From the Magazine: Classroom Crunch

Canada’s high school auto shops face an instructor shortage crisis as demand for programs increases

In high schools across Canada, the shortage of auto shop teachers is having a ripple effect throughout the industry.

Auto shop programs, once vibrant, hands-on options for students seeking careers in the trades, are being cut or sidelined — not for lack of interest, but for lack of teachers. Despite strong student demand and growing investment in skilled trades education, schools can’t find enough qualified instructors to keep their garages running.

Mark Koczij, principal of Western Technical-Commercial School (WTCS) in Toronto, said that in the past school year, he managed to hold on to nine sections of auto courses for Grades 10 through 12, but had to hire an “experienced, but not certified” instructor to cover three of the nine offerings.

“He’s an excellent auto teacher, especially at the junior level (Grade 10), but his specialty is welding and machining,” Koczij said. “I was able to find a young machine shop teacher to cover three of our sections in our manufacturing program in order to free up the auto teacher.”

Educators and industry voices have been sounding the alarm, warning that if the province and school boards don’t address the instructor pipeline soon, a generation of potential technicians could be left behind — and the auto industry’s labour shortage will only get worse.

“The barriers to becoming a teacher are without a doubt at the core of the problem,” Koczij said. “For tech educators, the model for bringing them in is all wrong, in my opinion. It’s still based too much on the model used for ‘academic’ educators like math or history teachers.”

Instead, the principal advocated for a model drawn from the trades themselves: Apprenticeship.

“Have a tradesperson work as an apprentice in a classroom with a master teacher for a year. Sure, they could take a few courses along the way, but they’re earning money right away,” he said. “Then they work a year under supervision in their own classroom. I believe you would find many more mid-career tradespeople and technicians comfortable with taking a short-term pay cut with the knowledge that they have a clear path to a long, well-paying career with a great pension.”

“And in all three schools, there was more demand than ability to supply. In every case, it came down to qualified teachers.”

Growing demand

WTCS is a dedicated, technology-focused school within the Toronto District School Board, where Koczij is doing everything he can to preserve his automotive program.

“We have strong demand for these programs, and I’ve seen the demand at the two previous schools I served,” Koczij said. “And in all three schools, there was more demand than ability to supply. In every case, it came down to qualified teachers.”

The Toronto school is not alone when it comes to growing demand for auto shop classes and a lack of certified teachers. Across Ontario and beyond, schools are reducing or eliminating auto shop offerings — not because students aren’t interested, but because no one is available to teach.

When auto classes are cut, students are redirected to other electives, such as arts, physical education or construction — whether or not those align with their interests or potential career paths.

The industry has stepped up to the plate to help alleviate the problem, says Koczij.

“We definitely feel support from industry. We received a grant of a brand-new HAAS TM1P CNC machine last year,” he said of the milling machine. “It is valued at almost $100,000, and we have teachers who have been trained on its use — taken to multi-day training in Ottawa. We also have incredible connections through our co-op program, where we partner with businesses and social service agencies of every kind to place students in experiential learning opportunities.”

Koczij believes there could always be more placements, particularly in manufacturing, engineering, technical design and automotive environments.

“I think there’s a resistance to the idea that high school-aged students can handle the work, but at WTCS we have some unbelievably strong students that we just can’t place in larger and more specialized sites,” he said. “But overall, I feel a strong interest on the part of industry, business and social services to engage with schools.”

“Teaching comes with a whole host of other things, such as assessments and learning outcomes and marking. When you’re in the high school level, you then have a curriculum that you follow.”

High barriers to entry

Koczij lays the blame squarely on a system that makes it nearly impossible for experienced tradespeople to step into the classroom.

“Forcing someone who is in the trades to go back to school for several years for teachers’ college without pay, in order to take a (short-term) pay cut, makes it impossible to transition great people into teaching,” he said.

He continued to advocate for an apprenticeship-style model.

“The requirement to do a university-style education to get your teaching qualifications is narrow-minded and contrary to everything we espouse in the education system, where we strive to build the learning around the learner,” Koczij said. “Technicians and tradespeople became masters by being apprentices first. That’s how it works. In teaching, this very model could be easily employed.”

Emily Chung, a former auto repair shop owner and current instructor at Georgian College’s Automotive Business School of Canada in Barrie, Ont., agreed that the path to teaching is too often opaque and unattractive.

Chung has seen firsthand why technicians don’t gravitate toward education.

“For the technicians that I’ve spoken with, teaching is not really on their radar because they frankly make a lot more money being technicians,” she says. “Long-term, they also recognize that they are not the most patient people.”

And the job isn’t just about turning wrenches and handing out advice.

“Teaching comes with a whole host of other things, such as assessments and learning outcomes and marking,” she said. “When you’re in the high school level, you then have a curriculum that you follow.”

Indeed, there are plenty of other items on the plate of a teacher.

“You’re doing a lot of behavioural management in addition to trying to teach them the content. You’re contending with parents, students’ attention, accommodations,” Chung added. There’s a lot more than, ‘This is an engine, here’s a spark plug, here’s a piston.’”

The misconception of an ‘easy’ transition

It’s a misconception to assume that if someone is great at their trade, they’d also be a great teacher, Ching pointed out

“That’s not it at all,” she said. “I think you need a certain level of discernment, patience and wisdom to be able to transfer the knowledge that you have onto somebody else — especially somebody who is also younger, who has a whole other lifestyle and things they have going on.

“When you become an educator, you’re not telling the students what to do. Training a service advisor or training another technician is very different than teaching students with learning outcomes and projects, assignments and that kind of thing.”

She emphasizes that teaching is “a very different skill set in and of itself,” and cautions that while some tradespeople may be brilliant at diagnostics and repairs, they may struggle to communicate knowledge in a student-centred way.

That gap between technical expertise and educational ability is rarely bridged with formal training, especially for those who enter teaching through industry pathways.

“I don’t know how much training and development they receive in terms of the technical side of things,” says Chung of high school shop teachers. “Most of the time, [professional development days] are spent on developing skills for methods in teaching and behavioural issues. It’s not necessarily time to get these trades teachers up to speed on things.”

“Training a service advisor or training another technician is very different than teaching students with learning outcomes and projects, assignments and that kind of thing.”

Potential fixes

Koczij believes the education system needs to overhaul its recruitment model and recognize that tradespeople, like teachers, learn best by doing — not sitting in a lecture hall.

He wants to see apprenticeship-style pathways into teaching, part-time or co-teaching roles that allow techs to get into education without sacrificing their careers, and more aggressive outreach from schools and boards to identify and mentor potential instructors.

“I’m always talking up the teaching gig to 35- to 50-year-old tradespeople I meet at parties,” he said. “The reality is that the provincial government has invested very well in tech programming. I’m lucky to be the principal of a tech school. I have access to funds, especially through programs like Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) and various experiential learning grants and funds that make it possible for us to do amazing things — we just need the knowledge, experience and passion of tech teachers to make it happen.”

Chung sees opportunities for more creative integration of industry expertise without necessarily requiring full-time teaching credentials.

She also points to Ontario’s SHSM programs and dual-credit offerings as valuable bridges between high school and the trades, noting that she sometimes works with schools to deliver day-long workshops aligned with the curriculum.

“There’s just many streams that the high schools are offering for students to get into the skilled trades, and I don’t quite know if industry has kept up with what is actually happening,” she said. “I have seen a change in the education system over the years that they want a lot more industry involvement, which is really good news.”

However, both agree that such collaborations are often fragmented or inconsistent — one-offs rather than embedded systems of support.

“It just kind of seems like it’s not like they’re completely separate, but it doesn’t seem like we’re all in the same room,” Chung says of the gap between schools, colleges and industry.

A warning for the future

Despite these challenges, both Koczij and Chung believe that teaching can be an incredibly rewarding second career for the right person.

“If somebody’s interested in teaching, [they] really have to have a heart for the students,” says Chung. “Because like I said, it’s a very different skill set. If money and stability and the pension are the driving factors, that’s OK too. I just think that the kids are going to really miss out on somebody who can really motivate them.”

High school is often a student’s first hands-on exposure to the skilled trades. Without strong shop programs, many will never discover a potential career in automotive — or will leave disillusioned.

“We have a really high attrition rate. They don’t end up staying in automotive,” says Chung. “So I think the person would really have to have a heart, not just to learn, but to stay in the industry.”

Koczij is doing what he can to keep his programs open, but without more instructors, more support and fewer barriers, even the best efforts won’t be enough.

“I’m beating the same drum, but get tech teachers in the classroom, now,” he says. “The administrators, central staff, teachers and support staff can do the rest in terms of providing facilities, funding consumables and the rest.”

Until that happens, schools will keep turning away students, and shop doors across Canada will continue to close — not for lack of interest, but because there are no new technicians coming down the pike.

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This article originally appeared in the August 2025 issue of CARS magazine