Chris Schwarz wrote a great article titled, ‘Pathfinding & Breadcrumbs’ in The Anarchist's Apprentice Substack. He described his apprentice’s “wandering” exploration of different types of woodworking instead of sticking primarily to the methods that he uses and describes as having “developed during the last 21 years”. He suggests that maybe he should teach his apprentice using a more rigid curriculum like the journalism courses that he took in college. I don’t believe he was serious for a moment but merely posing a rhetorical question to stimulate conversation.
Even though my curriculum is dictated by the Virginia Department of Education and the primary focus of my program is carpentry and home building, I’m easily sidetracked and decided to also teach woodworking, furniture making, and cabinetmaking. We call it, “on a side quest”. Some people may say that it’s a sign of a poor teacher or that I’m doing extra work, but I think that it’s worthwhile.
My side quests include whatever my students are interested in or have a curiosity about. If I don’t have time to discuss or demonstrate about it at that moment, I’ll try to schedule time later to address it.
Why do I spend so much time on these side quests? Because I found out early in my career that when people are interested in something, they actually pay attention and learn something. I found out quickly that even though I think that I’m hip or cool or in touch with the younger generation, I’m occasionally wrong.
Teenagers aren’t interested in birdhouses, even though they were a good money maker for our program. They wanted projects that they could connect with. Skateboards. They were a big hit. (Create-A-Skate is an excellent program.)
Last year I had a couple of students who wanted to learn how to turn on a lathe. Sure, why not? I helped them to acquire lathes, tools, and connected them with videos and books (Richard Raffan has an excellent series of videos and books).
This past week we’ve been going over construction plans and the floor plan that I had for them was this humongous house with two garages, 3 ½ baths, and a rotunda. It could have easily fit two or possibly three of my students’ homes. To show the other side of living though, we watched a video of an architect student in Japan who designed and built a multi-split-level home on a 600ish square feet plot of land.
Seeing the differences between the homes took us on a side quest of the current housing situation with the high prices. These teenagers voiced concerns about being able to afford a home and a couple talked about feeling that they were going to live with their parents forever. (Not to dwell on the topic, but as an instructor, it was a bit concerning to see the worry on their faces about being able to afford a home in adulthood.)
It’s not directly in the carpentry curriculum but we enjoy doing side quests about the many different types of homes. Sometimes it’s an exploration of homes based on region. Sometimes it’s an exploration of tiny homes or even vans and buses turned into homes (which happens to be an interest of mine). It’s usually nothing formal, just talking and exploring.
Part of our woodworking time, we discuss and demonstrate spoon carving.
When we talk about construction in general, we’ve discussed the many different construction career fields including heavy equipment operators, concrete workers, engineers, and others that don’t fall within the carpentry umbrella. I try to broaden that “career bubble” that many students have in their mind of possible careers.
I know that Chris Schwarz wasn’t serious about having a strict curriculum for his apprentice but I’ve seen it before in education. I’ve seen instructors/teachers not deviate from what they’ve intended to teach or what they feel they’re paid to teach. I think life is too short to not explore a little. Why not allow yourself to explore and discuss what students are interested/curious in?