Woodwork Would Work
What’s your passion? What hobby do you love to pursue outside your classroom? How do you bring that hobby into your classroom?
Here at St. Paul’s in Oconomowoc, Wis., we are blessed to have our students work with people that are passionate about woodworking. Each year, we have several events that bring in community and congregation members who have a passion for working with wood, as well as for working with our young people.
They are able to decorate their pieces of wood. And not in a normal way, necessarily.One of these projects, which has been around a long time, comes out of our fourth grade, with Mrs. Margie Hertneky. Mrs. Hertneky brings in her husband, a local carpenter, to work with the students to build napkin holders for Mother’s Day. He is a welcome addition to the class, and he comes in well prepared. Each student gets a set of pre-cut boards, usually 1x6s, to work with. These boards are sanded by the students, nailed together by the students, and decorated by the students—all under the tutelage of Mr. Hertneky. Once he gets to school, one of our rooms turns into a workshop for a few days. The fourth graders can be found in the classroom, science lab, or another available room, pounding away on their projects. They are able to decorate their pieces of wood. And not in a normal way, necessarily. They don’t usually use paint. Instead, they use hammers and stamps or phillips screwdrivers. They can also choose a pattern or create their own special drawing to stamp on the wood. Once they get that done, they attach two upright pieces of wood to the bottom piece to form the sides of napkin holder. When this is completed, the students make a card for their moms and take the item home as a Mother’s Day gift.
The students used power saws, drill/drivers, and nail guns to make these trees. 
A more recent “Pinteresty” twist on this includes two projects that our middle schoolers have worked on. Each year at Christmas time, our middle school students make gifts for their parents. In recent years, these have included some really neat silverware projects, some tile coaster projects, and things like that. However, the best one was a Christmas tree. These were not any normal trees, rather they were made out or repurposed pallets. One of our teachers is a carpenter in the summer, and he works with one of our “blogger mommy” types (who has a creative segment about once a month on a local TV news show) and our art teacher to create fairly simple projects that the kids can complete in a relatively short time and take home as a gift to their parents. The students used power saws, drill/drivers, and nail guns to make these trees, and then they painted them and put Scripture verses on them.
As I walked around and listened to the interactions, I heard discussions about how rough the pallet wood was and how it gave off splinters. I also heard one of the best comments about that. One of the teachers stated that this rough wood was similar to Jesus’ cross and continued with the student about how that felt on their skin right then—yet Jesus’ back was very sensitive due to the beatings that He had endured. What an awesome opportunity to witness! Many of the students also made the connection about Jesus being a carpenter before He started His ministry.
Many of our students are hungry for these kinds of hands-on activities.These projects have sparked more interest in hands-on activities. We have started summer programs, and many of our students are hungry for these kinds of hands-on activities. Our classes have also been asked to participate in making items for our annual auction. One of these items, made by our eighth graders, was a repurposed pallet cooler. The students cut all of the wood from the pallets, worked with their teacher to use the nail guns and screw guns, put it all together, and then presented it to the auction committee. It brought in a decent sum for our scholarship program that year!
Dear colleagues, keep up all of your great work! Keep bringing all of your passion to your classrooms and schools! May God continue to bless us all as we work for Him!
Oh yeah, one last thing—no one was injured in the making of the projects reported here. All students, staff, and volunteers have the same number of fingers that they started with, as well as the same number of holes in their bodies that they started with.
Jon Pickelmann is principal at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Oconomowoc, Wis.
