LAURENS COUNTY, Ga. — Students at West Laurens High School are building a path to success. They talked about the program and a special project they are working on.
Caleb Stevens is a West Laurens High School junior in Mr. Jeff Johnson's construction class.
"I was always ready for this classroom," Stevens said. "I always came in ready to come to school."
Stevens said he enjoys the interactive portions of the class, and it's even better when there's a passionate teacher next to you helping you along the way.
"I really liked the hands-on work because it not only gives you a visual learning element, but it also gives you that manual element," Stevens said. "We're not just thinking about doing it or learning about doing it, but the class actually gets you doing it."
Johnson says you can't be in the construction industry if you are not using your hands.
"When we're studying floors, we're building a floor," Johnson said. "When we're studying walls, we're building walls."
Johnson has been teaching at West Laurens High School for nine years and has been teaching in total for 30 years.
He says the program is designed to help close the skills gap in the construction industry and open his students' minds.
"They get out there, and they start working, and they start understanding how this thing goes together, and then they start correcting each other, and they start to understand what the next step is probably going to be, and they really worked as a team," Johnson said. "They really learned some great life skills. Who can say that they built a house when they were in high school? That's big time!"
His student, Adam Hurdle-Aguilera, is a senior and says he looks up to Mr. Johnson.
"When you're in his class, you want to be there, you want to learn, you want to listen to him," Hurdle-Aguilera said. "As knowledgeable as Mr. Johnson is and as good of a mentor as he is, it just made this class something I looked forward to every day."
Throughout the 2023 to 2024 school year, his class worked on a little house that is now up for bid and open to the public.
The little house is 16 feet wide and 34 feet long with one bedroom, one bath, a living room, and a kitchen.
All built by these students from the ground up.
Samuel Rowland is a junior and enjoys learning from textbooks to real-life situations. He worked with his father at Buckhorn Woodworks and helped Johnson build and organize a tool shed for his class.
"Mr. Johnson really made sure you felt involved and made it feel not much as a class but more as a family," Rowland said. "Seeing the ways he teaches, he really taught you like you were one of his own. The hands-on experience was really cool to me. Seeing that he never just sat down in class, he would show us some things in the book, but he was quicker to show us something outside and try hands-on and show us what we can do, whether it's nailing it with a hammer, nail gun or cutting stuff up."
Elijah Cain is a senior and just graduated from West Laurens High School.
He says he was proud of the work he and his classmates did when it came to building the little house.
"When we first started, just seeing all the bricks in place, it was just like four little bricks, and I was like, 'wow, this is a slow start,' and now here we are with the whole house built. Getting out here and building helped with the bookwork and made understanding the construction industry a lot easier."
Congratulations, West Laurens High School!
You can submit your bids through their "Bid Form" at the Laurens County School District.