"...And You Teach What?"

This blog was written by Mr. McCallum, a CTE Teacher at Carson High School!

Andrew Leon-Guerrero and his finished red cedar table.

When people ask what I teach, I tell them Furniture and Cabinetmaking and am often met with blank stares.  When I simplify and tell them “woodshop”, the light usually comes on and they tell me about a little trinket that they made long ago when they were in high school.  The prevalence of teaching woodworking in our schools has diminished significantly in recent years but its benefits should not be overlooked or taken for granted.

When most people think about woodshop class, they think of kids working on projects much like elves hard at work the week before Christmas.  That may be the perception but it’s only part of the reality.  First year students usually come into the classroom and immediately want to go out into the shop and make sawdust fly.   Because our main emphasis is on safety, this is not possible.  Students have to exhibit an enormous amount of patience while learning procedures, safety protocols on all machines and how to be safely productive while in the midst of 15 other fledgling cabinetmaking students.   

Woodshop not only teaches hands-on skills but also the importance of diligently planning out a project and thinking ahead.  A project that is ill-prepped can very easily become firewood.  Project planning requires students to use good solid math fundamentals to determine part sizes and to map out a logical procedure for construction; even the simplest projects require a certain sequence of steps.  PBLs are encountered daily and could be considered the backbone of the curriculum.  Students are encouraged to work together to problem-solve when it is safe to do so and scaffold each other as much as possible.

Since I’ve been working at Carson, my students have impressed me with many different projects including bird houses, bird feeders, checkerboards, gun cabinets, night stands, jewelry boxes, baseball bats, pens, key chains, gun cabinets, corner shelves, lamps, bowls, walking sticks, coffee tables, dinner tables, side tables, checkerboard tables, gun cabinets, plant stands, carvings, tactical walls, corn hole boards, little libraries, gun cabinets….and teapots.

All CTE courses, like Furniture and Cabinetmaking, expose students to experiences and learning opportunities that they will face in the future, either in post-secondary education or the workforce.  Although the cabinetmaking curriculum is not as prevalent as it once was, our numbers are good at Carson and it is still a great way for students to get a hands-on experience and have a trinket of their own to discuss in the future.

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