Northview High School’s automotive service class in Brazil, Indiana, doesn’t operate just as a classroom, but a live business as well, WTHI-TV 10 reports.
Students in the class work on real customers’ cars, servicing anywhere between 500 and 750 vehicles each year. They’re led by their teacher, Tony Migliorini, a 2024 Golden Apple Award recipient who’s been teaching automotive service for nearly three decades.
For Migliorini, the biggest goal of the program is to equip students with skills that will translate into a career path.
“I always want to talk to them in 5 years and they say I'm working in a shop and I just bought a house and I just bought a car,” told Migliorini. “That's my reward when I know what they've learned or at least started to learn here at Northview has taken them to that point.”
Migliorini does all he can to provide his students with those skills. Several times now, his class has been the winning team at the biggest automotive competition in the area, the Ivy Tech Skills Competition. In the program’s last nine weeks, students have the opportunity to do an internship. Currently, two of the program’s students are working at local automotive shops.
“He's just always been a great teacher, someone I can go to when I'm feeling down I just go down to his class ... He'll make it better,” said automotive student Lane Sanders.
