How to Teach Kids the Trades - Short #287
HVAC School - For Techs, By Techs
Bryan Orr
4.9 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this short podcast from the Bry-X stage of the 7th Annual HVAC/R Training Symposium, Ty Branaman and Leilani Orr talk about how to teach kids the trades. They share lessons they've learned from the GRIT Foundation and over their careers as trades and home educators. Their approaches have evolved over the years, and GRIT has also evolved quite a bit from its beginnings.
Leilani and Ty have found that the Socratic method is great for getting students to think critically; instead of spoon-feeding answers, teachers ask the students "why" and "how" questions. In GRIT Camps, mentors are there to keep students safe and guide them when needed, but mentors ultimately let students make mistakes and figure things out on their own. Students often make leaky joints when they braze for the first time, but it's their first time holding torches and most of the tools used at GRIT Camp.
Making mistakes is crucial to the learning process. The mistakes we (and the students) make with our own hands also stick with us more than being told how to do a task the right way. Then, when students struggle, we can ask if they want to know a shortcut; they give their mentors permission to show them the right way. This method builds curiosity, and it allows students to get excited about a career in the trades or realize that the trades aren't for them but still walk away with hands-on skills and a newfound respect for the trades.
Many tradespeople take the trade skills they learned as children for granted, as many children nowadays don't develop the same hands-on skills. The GRIT Foundation has a course that teaches mentors to teach students those hands-on skills that already seem like second nature to them. Even so, the course is just a guide, not something that needs to be followed to the letter. Many of the concepts taught in the guide and that mentors use at GRIT Camp also apply to apprentices.
Learn more about the GRIT Foundation at https://www.thegritfoundation.com/.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Stop following me, will you? Just kidding. Follow, like, subscribe, all that stuff that we do on social media. This is a podcast, but we're more than just a podcast. I'm a man with many diverse interests, skills, athletic pursuits, just kidding. I'm not really a good athlete. I guess I'm probably an above average golfer, but that's not saying much because most golfers suck. Anyway, why do we keep talking about me? This episode is about Ty Branaman and Lailani or a lady I happen to know a lot about and think a lot of talking about how to teach kids the trades, things that they've learned, things that we've learned through Grit Foundation. |
| 0:37.7 | Tai has been an educator for a long time. Lelani has home educated our 10 children, five of which |
| 0:43.1 | work in our trades business. So clearly they wanted to do it. Our two oldest are refrigeration |
| 0:47.4 | technicians, super proud of those guys. If you listen to some of the really early episodes where I |
| 0:51.4 | teach electrical to some young teens, I think they were 12 and 14 or |
| 0:55.7 | 11 and 13 or something like that. Those guys are both service technicians now and the refrigerations |
| 1:01.2 | part of our business, the grocery market refrigeration side. So it's something that we've actually |
| 1:05.8 | done, taught kids, not only taught young people the trades, but also got people excited about |
| 1:10.7 | working in the |
| 1:11.2 | trades. So that's what Ty and Lailani talk about here at the symposium, 26. Symposium's |
| 1:18.4 | coming back, 27, save the date. Keep tabs on it, HVCRSchool.com to find out more. But before we |
| 1:24.1 | hear from Ty and Lailani, let's hear from our great sponsors. |
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