Rare...but not Impossible

2010-09-15T17:43:00.000-07:00

For students, high school is more of a social hour as much as it is a place for them to learn and grow. Because of this, it is rare for a student to say a class they took changed them in one way or another. It's even more of a rarity for a student to say to their teacher, "I want to come back. I want to take this class again." Fortunately, this occurrence is merely rare, but not impossible. I know this because I experienced this in Geometry in Construction during my freshman year at Loveland High School during the 2006-2007 school year.

I had always been the shy awkward girl who wouldn't put herself out there. It didn't help that entering high school, I was still carrying around the "new girl" label. I had just moved to Loveland from a small town in Iowa, and I had yet to find any true friends. When I was signing up for classes for my freshmen year, I had nothing to lose by signing up for Geometry in Construction. Architecture and interior design had always been an interest to me, so my parents encouraged me to take it, although my dad bet me that I wouldn't be able to drive a nail into a 2x4 (at the time I couldn't begin to tell you what a 2x4 was). So I took the class, totally oblivious about what I was getting myself into.

On the first day of class I remember looking around and seeing a ton of guys and hardly any girls. That's when I began to get worried. Mr. Burke was giving us heaps of notes on Roman architecture and Moore seemed to be speaking a foreign language up on the blackboard teaching what he claimed was everyday "geometry". Then the day came around where they gave us a hammer, nails, and a chunk of wood and we had to simply hammer the nail into the wood. I failed. Miserably. At that point, I was ready to give up. I couldn't believe that these two crazy teachers expected high school kids to actually build a structurally sound home for someone to actually live in!

Thank goodness I didn't. We went on a field trip to the Colorado State University's Ropes Course for a team building activity. I was jumping off 40 foot high poles and the only thing keeping me from ending up splat on the ground like a bug were classmates holding my rope. Later in the year, I realized this was so much more than a class where we learn geometry and different building trades, it's a "real world survival class". You learn to work with people different than you to work to a common goal. You learn to problem solve and to look out for one another. I mean, if one of those kids even sneezed while holding my rope as I jumped, I may not be here telling you this.

As the year went on and we were building the house, we saw something coming from all of the hard work we put into learning in the classroom. We were proving to ourselves that we could actually do something that affects others. Especially for the girls, we found that we were just as good as the boys, if not better. Our cuts were more precise, and our handy work was usually right on. Because we were building, we were learning life skills that most of us will use when we have our own homes that may need work on. We learned to do everything from framing to drywall to pluming to electrical. We did it all.

I'm a totally different person since taking the class. All of the students in the class created a bond that felt like a family. This is why I have left that shy girl behind, because now I know I can do the impossible and come out on top. To this day, my best friends are from this class. I owe it all to Burke and Moore for giving me the confidence to do more than I thought I could. I even asked to continue in the class which is why I become a member of Project Design Team, where I continued to be heavily involved with the program.

So for any student who says that high school is a waste of time and they get nothing out of it, they must not have been a part of a class like Geometry in Construction, where they found their place and gave them the confidence to be all they can become in life. It's rare, but for sure, not impossible.

Geometry in Construction LHS Student Blog

Rare...but not Impossible