At a (HBAV) Home Builders Association of Virginia’s meeting I was able to meet up with several carpentry instructors from around Virginia. It was a fun time as we discussed our students, our programs, the administrators, and our business partners.
I’ve seen a lot of guarded people in the education and trade communities. People who don’t want to give out their “secrets” of how they do things. I understand that it often represents a lot of time and in some cases, money that they’ve spent developing their ideas and they don’t want people to come in and “snatch it up” and get credit for them but these instructors are the complete opposite.
Any instructor is welcome to come to my shop and see what I’m doing. Any instructor is welcome to my lesson plans, my Google drive, and my brain. The more ideas and resources the instructor has at their disposal, the better their classes will be. The better the classes, the better the knowledge and education the students will receive. And it’s all about the students. And these other instructors felt the same way.
Our programs are diverse but they have the same goal. A couple of the other instructors were building homes with their students. A couple of the other instructors taught a full line of trade education including electrical, plumbing, and HVAC to their students. My program includes woodworking, furniture making, and cabinetry. It was fun to hear what everyone was teaching and I got some good ideas from them.
To help my students learn home building techniques, I start my Carpentry I students off with building model homes. I use ¼” material to represent students and they learn to lay out the studs, doors, and windows and use hot glue to secure the wood. We then transition to 1” material and build a half size wall that’s 4’ tall by 8’ long with a door and a window. I then talk about rafters and we go over the concept with them constructing a single rafter on a ridge board that I have mocked up.
For Carpentry II, we start the year refreshing their knowledge and then build a 4’ tall playhouse out of 2”x4”s, using correct framing techniques for the studs, doors, and windows. They will sheath the house and will put a roof on it.
The main goal is for them to become familiar with the various home building techniques and secondary is to sell these playhouses to recover the cost of the material. Teaching these concepts can be costly and we reuse a lot of the lumber that we have until we can’t anymore but we also try to raise money for our program. Thankfully I was able to get a donation of 2”x4”s from Ray’s Siding of Spotsylvania County that helped tremendously.
I enjoy sharing what we’re doing and if anyone has any questions, comments, or smart remarks, please feel free to let me know.