ABOVE: Bob Bonin and Adam Carstensen look at one of Fairmont High School’s welding stations. Carstensen, an FHS alumnus, will be returning this fall to teach.

FAIRMONT- When Fairmont High School (FHS) resumes classes in the fall its staff will be joined by Adam Carstensen, an FHS alumnus who will be teaching construction trades in the career and technical education (CTE) department alongside his former instructor, Bob Bonin.

FHS has had a difficult time hiring new CTE teachers amid a statewide shortage of certified instructors. In response Bonin and other staff members began to give their students opportunities to experiment with instruction.

“We started talking about how to grow our own. How do we start encouraging our students to look at going into the educational world? We started planting seeds with him when he was younger, and by the time he was a senior those seeds were getting established,” said Bonin.

“I started shop classes in the 9th grade. I really wasn’t thinking about teaching at all, but then as I progressed through 10th, 11th, and 12th, he allowed more opportunities to teach student on student. I didn’t think of it as teaching then but after graduating high school and looking back on the impact he had on my life and my course of career that did seem to fit,” said Carstensen.

As a student Carstensen enrolled in several welding classes and began helping other students in the classroom.

“If a student needed help you’d just hop in there before he went to Bob and then you’d get a feel for giving them something they didn’t know and that satisfaction of helping is what really drew me towards it,” said Carstensen.

When Carstensen was an upperclassman he helped teach an introduction to welding course as a teacher’s aide. Because of their familiarity with welding Carstensen and another student taught a large portion of the course content.

“Those two guys really did a great job because I had (their students) the following year and couldn’t tell the difference between a class that I had taught versus a class these two guys had taught,” said Bonin.

After graduating from FHS Carstensen studied welding in St. Cloud before spending three years in the industry constructing water towers across the country. Now that he’s returned to Fairmont he plans to stay at FHS permanently. This coming year he will teach advanced welding, HVAC systems, and a college in the school course.

Carstensen said it was strange returning to his former high school as a teacher.

“I still have that mindset about being a student and looking at all of these people as my mentors and they still are, but now I go to them with different types of questions, actually look and see how they do things and not the student aspect of seeing them stand in front of the class and teach. You see all the background work they do and it makes me appreciate what has been put into me in high school,” said Carstensen.

Bonin is thankful to have Carstensen as a colleague and is glad students will be able to draw upon Carstensen’s industry expertise.

“The way I look at it is it’s been eons since I’ve been in a college setting learning new things. I can teach, but he can teach you more about welding than I can because he’s been on the front line doing it. I’m excited to have him back, to learn things from him, as well as being able to mentor him to be better than what I could’ve been,” said Bonin.