The "pencil holder" gambit

Back in the day, in my early years as a high school shop teacher, I had taken a cursory glance at the official curriculum, and figured I could do better. 

I introduced a really simple three-stage "lesson plan" for the entire semester. The class was held in what used to be called a machine shop but was now officially known as a manufacturing lab.

Since "manufacturing" means making stuff, the students could make whatever they wanted, so long as they followed my three-stage protocol, at least according to my interpretation of the official curriculum documents.

Stage one; present me a project proposal. Draw me a picture. That's called a blueprint in the real world. Great opportunity to learn about scale and measurement.

Stage two; write up an order of operations. That requires the student to walk through the entire manufacturing process on paper. Obvious miscues are way cheaper to fix while they're still on paper.

Step three; get it done.

So pretty much the first project proposal I get looks a lot like a hash pipe to me.

"Hey Billy, this looks like a hash pipe to me...."

"Oh no sir, it's a pencil holder."

"Get outta here Billy! You're tryna' slip a hash pipe by me!"

Anyway, Billy showed me where the pencil went, and that was good enough for me. 

That class must have flooded the hash pipe market for years!