This new life skills and job readiness course was designed to suit remote learning options, and transformed back to in-person programming in 2021. Students learned about a wide variety of common and specialty tools, plumbing and electrical systems, and more. We also covered essential building materials like wood, concrete, and steel, and which materials are best in a given condition.

Students used their new understanding of tension and compression in a truss design competition: everyone built a unique truss from popsicle sticks, preparing to load it with an increasing weight of sand, and predicted which connection will break under pressure. The student with the lightest weight truss to heaviest load ratio won!

Huge thanks to Dowbuilt for sponsoring this program, which pays generous stipends to all students to promote equitable engagement in this difficult school year. And so much love to the first in-person term’s fabulous mentor team, Gilbert Montwill Humphreys, Vy Pham, Greg Dutcher, Ellery O’Darrah and to all our wonderful guest presenters who shared their specialties with our students.