Carpentry Instructor Shawn Rouleau was approached by a local organization called Habitat for Humanity to help build homes and build many different items they can use for the homes.

If you haven’t heard of Habitat for Humanity, it is a nonprofit organization that helps families build and improve places to call home. Habitat for Humanity believes that affordable housing plays a critical role in strong and stable communities.

Due to class time constraints and school rules, students couldn’t travel and build within the hour and a half class period, so they resolved this problem by building the items in the construction class.

Some of the items being built are mailbox posts for all the houses and picnic tables. An estimated thirty houses are to be built throughout the next three years; thus, the carpentry class will match that and build thirty mailbox posts and thirty picnic tables.

“My main goal as an instructor is for my students to have a safe place for kids to come and explore and try out new tools,” said Rouleau. “There is a lot more going on here than you would think; it is not just a place where kids go when they don’t have enough classes to take.”

The tables and mailbox posts take numerous days to build for a single person, so pairing up in groups greatly helps the process. As a former carpentry student, I believe teamwork was what helped me finish my larger projects in a faster amount of time.

“Building these tables has taught me many skills like how to cut angles, measure things, and make stuff proportional,” said senior Julian Slusser. “This will teach me a lot of good skills that I will use in the real world. If I ever need to do a job in construction, I am glad I’ve learned these skills.”