The lathe hums quietly as a HopeTree Academy student carefully presses a cutting tool to a small piece of wood. With a steady hand, patience, and gentle pressure, he soon coaxes a curved, elegant cylinder from a simple block of wood. The cylinder is destined to become the barrel of one of the gorgeous customized ink pens the HTA woodworking class has been producing since March.
The pens are just one of many projects Vocational Instructor Jeff Young has devised to serve as teaching situations for his classes in woodworking, welding, and mechanics. The classes are designed to give students a basic introduction to tool usage and safety, then allow them to expand and develop their skills at their own pace. Quite often students discover they have surprising levels of aptitude they never expected. The pens began three month ago as a simple project to give the students a change of pace from building working on larger items like the Corn Toss Games and wooden patio furniture. However, the pens have turned out to be so popular, the class has produced over 500 of them for distribution to friends and supporters of the Agency. A wid assortment of oak, walnut, pine, and other woods have been used to create the body of the pens. Young and his students have also experimented with different types of acrylic material. Between the variations in wood grain and the artistry of the students shaping the pens, no two of the writing instruments are identical.
Throughout the process, the students learn valuable, marketable skills as well as enhance their own feelings of self-worth. Coupled with other ‘real world’ skills students learn in the Vocational Program, these students are definitely putting themselves in position to ‘write their own tickets’ to successful futures once they leave HopeTree.
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