SOUTH HADLEY — The piercing sound of electric saws and the smell of freshly cut wood filled the wood shop one day last week at South Hadley High School.
Students in the school’s new vocational program for carpentry, affiliated with the New England Carpenters Training Center in Millbury, were busy working on projects including a cedar strip canoe, kitchen table and shelving.
The 18 students in the program spend three hours a day doing a combination of classroom work and hands-on learning. The semester began with basic competencies such as shop safety, hand tool identification and proper usage, care and maintenance. From there, students progressed onto small projects and then larger ones like the canoe.
Carpentry and cabinet-making teacher William O’Neil said the program allows youngsters who are visual and hand-on learners to get that experience in the school
“They are seeing that they are worth something,” O’Neil said, and described their reactions. “‘Wow, I built something. I did this.’”
The school is also working on developing a diploma for the program, according to O’Neil.
“It’s funny getting up in front of parents saying not every student needs to go to college,” O’Neil said. “With this program, they still can.”
Principal Diana Bonneville said the school spent last year developing the program and figuring out what they could do to better meet the needs of their students. The school conducted a survey to gauge students’ interests and settled on establishing carpentry and culinary arts programs.
“They are really actively engaged from bell to bell,” Bonneville said.
The program has a two-fold benefit for the school and students, according to Bonneville. Not only does it help meet the needs of the students, it also helps keep them in the district, rather than paying to send them to Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in Northampton, for example.
O’Neil is always watchful in supervising the carpentry shop. Mid-conversation, he stopped to remind a student halfway across the room that his protective eyewear belongs over his eyes rather than on his head. Later, O’Neil stepped away to help a student move a set of sawhorses so he could properly cut his piece of wood.
“It’s hard to be a shop teacher — you got to have eyes in the back of your head,” O’Neil said.
Just a few months into the program, freshman Kennylee Aponte,14, has finished about 15 projects, including some signs, an L-shaped desk, a nightstand and a bed frame.
If the students provided the wood, they can take the projects home or sell them. Aponte said he sold the signs and kept the furniture.
“Kenny, he took to this like a duck to water,” O’Neil said.
Aponte said the program provides a better opportunity for students who don’t get good grades in school.
Aponte, whose dad works as a carpenter, said he plans to join the union after high school.
His classmate, Hayden Moynahan, a junior, said he might also join the union if he gets good at carpentry.
“I think it’s a good thing to learn if you need to build something when you’re older,” Moynahan said.
Justin Pouliot, 17, a senior, said he plans to become a firefighter after high school and do carpentry on the side to make extra money.
“I felt it was a more useful thing to me than some other classes,” Pouliot said. “Anything that will keep me engaged is better.”
The bookshelf Pouliot completed was a gift to his girlfriend. He’s now working on a kitchen table.
Ray Miner is a paraprofessional at the high school who works with a student in the carpentry program.
He said he sees the program as a way to keep students who are anxious to get out of school engaged.
“They are here and they are interested,” Miner said.
In addition to the positives the program does for students, Miner said he also learned a thing or two.
At the end of the year, students will take a test which, if passed, will ultimately help those interested in joining the carpentry union advance further in their studies.
For students who started the program as freshman, like Aponte, graduating after four years will set them up to move onto the New England Carpenters Training in Millbury. As apprentices in the union, they would start at $28 an hour, according to O’Neil.
In the future, O’Neil said he hopes to partner with Habitat for Humanity to build a house, or remodel a foreclosed house in the community. For now though, the students continue to work on their projects.
“We’ve made a big investment in them,” O’Neil said.
At the start of the year, each student was given a tool bag with state-of-the art tools they would use on a job. When they graduate, the students get to take the tool bags with them.
“I figure if we made an investment in them — give them the right tools — it will be hard from them not to succeed,” O’Neil said. “Literally, we are giving them the tools to succeed.”
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.