HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- Imagine you and your fellow high school students designing and building a house from the ground up.
Henrico County students in the career and technical education program are about halfway through building one in the eastern part of the county.
While school systems across the country are turning back to vocational and career education as opposed to pushing all students to college, Henrico County never turned away.
This is the seventeenth house students have built since the program's inception in 1987, said Philip Parker, vice president of the Henrico County Technical Education Foundation.
"What we're trying to do is open the eyes of our young students because they're hands-on learners, they're tactile learners," Parker said. "We want them to understand what they do is real. They get the chance to come out here and build a house."
The students do all the work, closely supervised by their instructors and other professionals.
"I feel like it has a team aspect just like football," said Highland Springs student Lee Dilworth, who plays defensive end on the Springers football team. "Everybody's working to reach a common goal - to finish the house."
Masonry instructor Glenn Edwards says it's also a team effort on the part of the school system and the volunteer-driven foundation that makes it happen year after year.
"It's architects, contractors, real estate agents, all volunteering their time to help these students out," Edwards said. "They supply us with the materials and the land and they sell the house when it's done. And all the profit goes right back into the next project for the students. So this is our outdoor classroom."
Hanging out with these teens Friday, watching them work, I was really impressed with their maturity, focus, hustle and willingness to listen and follow instruction.
Masonry instructor Glenn Edwards
"I have these students for two years," Edwards said. "I get kids but I graduate adults."
Brad Beazley, career specialist with the county's CTE program, said they also work with the students on the resumes, preparing them for job interviews, how to be ready and focused to work - "workplace readiness skills . . . to get on the job and stay on the job - get hired and stay hired."
Not only do the students learn valuable and marketable skills, he said, they have the satisfaction of seeing their hard work take shape in the form of a finished house.
Later, he said, "they'll be able to ride by with their children and say, 'I helped build that house.'"
These days, a skilled tradesperson can make as much or more than a college graduate.
"We believe that our students need to be college and career ready so they have the choice," Beazley said.
For years I have been lamenting the decline in vocational education. Not every student is college material, and to set that expensive expectation rather than offer a marketable choice has been destructive. It has also required skilled workers and rugged laborers to immigrate (or sneak into) our country to build and maintain our roads, homes, bridges, factories and everything else that requires hands-on work.
For generations, having a trade - working with your hands - was honorable, and I don't understand how we got away from that.
I was fortunate to become a bricklayer early on, and it has been a blessing to me my entire life. Even if you only use your trade as a back-up, it will help keep you emotionally, physically and financially healthy.
Kudos to Henrico County for their innovative program. May it spread across the land.
Make sure you check out the video to see the houses that have been built and watch the students in action.
And remember: a working man is a happy man.
