If your memories of high school shop and mechanics class involve a grizzled teacher shouting at students not to hammer their fingers while building a birdhouse, it’s time to go back to class. Todd Collins, a teacher at East Hickman High School in Lyles, Tenn., recently led a team of students from his auto mechanics class in building a drag race car to compete in a race televised on SPEED. Not your typical class assignment.

The students and their trials and tribulations in building their drag racer, were filmed from the first axle to the big race. The show, Drag Race High, airs on SPEED Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Eastern/9 p.m. Central. Collins couldn’t be more excited or more proud.

“Sometimes in education, you get to a point where you think you’re helping as many people as you can. You don’t know how much you actually accomplish. It’s been very rewarding to sit back and see what these kids accomplished,” Collins says. “The fact they put together this car like they did is overwhelming.”

Collins’ assignment to the group was to take a beat up Ford Mustang, strip it to the bones and rebuild it as a drag racer. The students were allowed to obtain advice from experts, but had to do all the work themselves.

“It was like a team coming together. I told the kids when we first started that I was going to be the manager and they were going to be the employees, and we were going to turn this into a business,” Collins says. “The kids looked at me funny because they had never really been a part of anything like this. They didn’t believe this was actually happening.”

High Five Entertainment, the production company for Drag Race High, knows viewers will be drawn in by the process of a group of young people building a drag racer from bumper to bumper; but it’s the students’ personalities that will keep viewers coming back for more.

Student Michael Brown is the team’s resident welder who worried he didn’t know enough about autos to make a difference for the team. Collins reassured Brown that what he didn’t know they could cover together over the summer to prepare for the task. “Michael really stepped up,” Collins says. “He’s been with me on this from the very beginning”.
Another fan favorite is sure to be Megan Stone, an athlete with a mechanical background who became close friends with Brown as they worked diligently to get their car ready for the big race.

Collins is excited to see Drag Race High, but is most enthusiastic about what the show will do for his students in the future. “I would hire any of these kids in the business on different levels for different things. All of them are capable after being this responsible,” Collins says. “Some of them will benefit from this for the rest of their lives. It has opened their eyes to different avenues of where and what type of career they may want to pursue. I hope it’s life changing all the way around and for the good.”

Courtesy of ARAcontent

SPEED is the nation’s first and foremost cable television network dedicated to motor sports and the passion for everything automotive. From racing to restoration, motorcycles to movies, SPEED delivers quality programming from the track to the garage. Now available in more than 78 million homes in North America, SPEED is among the fastest-growing sports cable networks in the country and, the home to NASCAR on SPEED. For more information, visit www.SPEEDtv.com.

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