Saws and hammers part of NEISD curriculum
Saws buzzing, tape measurers zipping, and hammers banging are not your average classroom sounds, but at the Career and Technical Education Center, that’s exactly what you’ll find at the Construction Technology Academy.
“Right now in the school, we do have an outdoor lab, it is a house lab. It is safety put together where students can harness up and they can climb around the structure,” CTA Department Chair Shawn Jensen said.
Shawn Jenson is the Department Chair at the Construction Technology Academy (CTA) teaching students skills like ventilation, plumbing, electrical work, and construction.
The house lab facility is for students to learn first-hand.
“The electricians can practice their wiring, the HVAC guys can practice doing their installs on air-conditioning units, and it also has the ability for the plumbers to run their pipe through it,” Jensen said.
Students are bussed in from high schools across the district to learn a trade.
“Here at the academy we are trying to teach students the opportunity to enter the workforce. We want these students to be able to replace the aging workforce. Right now, the average construction worker is in their fifties,” Jensen said.
He said in his years of teaching, he’s seen a lot of growth in his past students.
“I’ve had probably twenty students who have majored in the Construction-Science field who are currently project managers, or superintendents for a large commercial construction company. I have former students who are commercial architects,” he said.
Some of his current students are already using what they’ve learned at home like James Madison High school Junior, Jodeci King.
“We took a course on using a pickaxe last week and I had to tear down my fence because it started to lean, so it was really useful because I knew how to swing it properly and break up the concrete,” he said.
King also plans to make a living out of what he’s learned.
“I’m probably going to flip houses when I get older. My favorite part is the demo work. You’ve got to tear stuff down and then probably rebuild from the walls out.” King said.
It’s not only for the boys either.
“I think it’s important so you can prove that girls can do it too, not just guys. I kind of felt intimidated when I first got here because I was the only girl. Now I feel like I’m the boss,‘’ Johnson High School Freshman Haley Cruz Lucario said.
It’s the next generation of bosses, Jensen hopes will thrive in the workforce.
“At the age of twenty-one, I was running a half a million-dollar job, several of them. During this process, my hands failed and simply could not do the work, I became disabled as a carpenter. I wanted to share my joy of carpentry and joy of building- things that I learned from my shop teacher in high school- and I wanted to give it to these kids. Throughout these years, it’s just been a joy seeing these kids pick it up and want and the desire to learn the craft.”
Discover the NEISD way, lifting students to success through hand-on experience and training.
