Amanda Voisard The Washington Post
Reaching to the top of the unfinished doorway, with partially-built walls and beams around him, Ron Meinert pointed to the spot where a wooden plank had to be nailed in.
“The way you guys have marked the line, it’s gonna be really hard for you to fit this in here,” Meinert, a nail gun at the ready, explained to two Fairfax County high school juniors. “I’m not gonna shoot it, I’m only gonna show you,” he said, climbing a red and silver ladder.
Wearing green hard hats, Madison Jaminet, from West Springfield High School, and Aidan Magner, from Hayfield Secondary, eagerly got to work. Before Jaminet could place her foot on the first ladder rung, their 65-year-old instructor headed off to help another student building another door frame.
The Springfield house taking shape around them was bustling with five teens getting paid to work and learn during a three-week technical education program. There was constant motion, a far cry from the endless Zoom days students struggled through during the pandemic.
Next door is a home that another group of Fairfax County students helped finish just last month and is now under contract after an initial listing of more than $1 million. The houses are the 10th and 11th that Fairfax students have helped build —along with professional contractors — in that neighborhood.
Each year, 15-20 Fairfax County high-schoolers hang drywall, use power tools, and learn technical and life skills that come with building a home. None has proved as challenging as the 2020-2021 covid-wrought academic year.
During much of the school year, as they tried to learn to build a house online, some students said their eyes glazed over during construction videos.
“This is a million times better,” said Philip Wilson, a senior from Justice High School who was in his third day of the program’s summer section. Many of the students who got a taste of home-building during their break hope to join the academic year program.
Amanda Voisard
The Washington Post
Ron Meinert, 65, residential construction teacher, waters the lawn of a home in the Spring Village Estates on Thursday, July 8, 2021 in Springfield, VA.
Amanda Voisard
The Washington Post
The inside of the finished home for sale is seen in the Spring Village Estates on Thursday.
When students could go to the site during last school year, they felt a sense of accomplishment that was rare during the pandemic, coloring an otherwise gray year.
That was especially true for Shane Bhatti, a recent South County High School graduate who helped finish the five-bedroom house next door to the construction site, that now features crisp, white countertops and spacious tiled bathrooms.
After the 2019-2020 school year, which ended with disruptions caused by the pandemic, Bhatti wanted a reprieve from his virtual education. He didn’t know if he’d enjoy installing tiling, but it had to be better than online class. So he applied for the construction class.
As the region’s infection rates ebbed and flowed, Bhatti and the other students bounced back and forth between the virtual grid and the real site, making it hard at times to keep up with their technical education. After the pandemic kept students away from the house for six weeks this winter, Bhatti said he was amazed — and saddened — at how much progress contractors had been made on the house without the teens.
[CDC says students vaccinated against the coronavirus can go maskless in fall]
Still, contractors quickly pivoted to ensure students could practice. When Bhatti returned to a mostly hardwood-floor house, he found a closet in the master bedroom waiting for him to put in the last bit of hardwood flooring. It meant everything.
And while some labored through the online portion of the class, Shane was “completely, 100 percent engaged,” wanting to be as prepared as possible upon return to the site, said Michelle Munday, Bhatti’s mom.
“Anybody who has an 18-year-old senior who had to do virtual learning knows the struggle,” Munday said, noting the challenges her son, who has a mild form of cerebral palsy, faced in staying attentive during online learning. “But because of this class, he went from not sharing anything [about his school day] to coming home excited.”
Once, in late winter, when he was back at the site, Bhatti remembers Meinert buying pizza for the students on a lunch break. As they pulled out chairs from the trailer to take in the unseasonably warm day, Bhatti was astonished at how much construction jargon he now knew. They’d come far, Meinert told the students, both in the progress of building the house and in their individual growth.
Bhatti could now easily discuss the minute details of building. He even enjoyed it.
Meinert, who’s been the instructor for a year and a half, had tears in his eyes as he heard how fondly Bhatti recalled that day.
“I just have a heart for these kids,” Meinert said. “It's everything to me. And being in person without interruption just makes it all possible again.”
Because of days like that, Bhatti has decided to pursue a career in carpentry and will begin an apprenticeship later this month. And while not all of the students will go on to jobs related to what they’re learning, they’ll have the basic skills to maintain their homes in the future, Meinert said.
For the students at the house under construction, the fact that they could be there in person at all was a relief — and even normal.
Amanda Voisard
The Washington Post
Summer experience participants include 16-year-old Paul Signet, left, Philip Wilson, 16, Madison Jaminet, 15, and Aidan Magner, 16. The students share a laugh in the classroom trailer at the Spring Village Residential Construction Site on July 8, 2021 in Springfield, VA. Fairfax County Public Schools in partnership with the Foundation for Applied Technical Education, Inc. gives students an opportunity to build single-family homes using specialized course curriculum developed with the National Association of Home Builders.
On Thursday, as the day’s work wrapped up around noon, six hours after the students arrived, Meinert met them in the trailer classroom. Munching on Goldfish crackers, the students sheepishly listed off what they had learned that day: Safety practices, technical words and life lessons that Meinert makes sure to always impart.
After mostly one-sentence answers, Meinert got the message. Only their third day on the job, the students were exhausted from a long day’s work — not checked out like they’d been during online courses — and were ready to leave.
“Don’t be so chatty, everyone,” Meinert joked. “I’ll see you at six o’clock sharp tomorrow morning. Don’t be late.”
For many of these students, after a year of trudging through online class, they wouldn’t dream of it.
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The Link LonkJuly 12, 2021 at 05:57AM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/fairfax-students-build-house/2021/07/11/29e79f90-df6a-11eb-ae31-6b7c5c34f0d6_story.html
Weary from virtual learning, Fairfax students donned hard hats to help build $1 million house - The Washington Post
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