One of the unique aspects of our curriculum is that it reaches students at more than one level. These levels are often summarized as “head, heart, and hands” and “thinking, willing, and feeling.” By carefully integrating a rich, developmentally appropriate curriculum success in one subject leads to growth in seemingly unrelated areas of life. The inclusion of woodworking is a prime example. Woodworking encourages students to reach deep within themselves for unused and undiscovered skills and capacities. These new capacities are then also available for other aspects of life.
Thinking
Complex thinking and visualization skills are developed while holding the image of a three-dimensional shape in the mind for extended periods of time as the form is slowly carved. Students learn important facts about the nature of wood, trees, forests, and ecosystems. They learn the proper use of hand tools, such as mallets, gouges, saws, carving knives, clamps, sandpaper and they learn to make and use a natural wood finish.
Will and Patience
If their project is ever to be completed, each student must work alone, with steady concentration. Others can guide and encourage, but each is ultimately alone in bringing out the shape they envision. Week after week, they apply their will to conquer unforeseeable challenges, repeatedly meeting the wood’s resilience and hidden surprises with their own growing determination.
In the process, students adapt to repeated, inevitable frustrations, discovering hidden knots and cracks that may drastically effect their project. They also learn to pace themselves. It is especially true in woodworking that the race is not always to the swift. Those who work too fast or too carelessly inevitably cut too deeply. This is a powerful antidote to the more negative effects of our air-conditioned, push-button society.
Feeling and Society
Woodworking is inherently dangerous. Few survive without at least one (hopefully small) cut, scrape, abrasion, or blister. For this reason, safety is stressed above all. Shop rules are strictly enforced, and students quickly see that the rules are not arbitrary or punitive. Because students may not endanger themselves or their neighbors, safety becomes both an individual and group responsibility. It is quickly understood that the need to watch out for each other, care for our tools, and keep the shop clean and orderly are important principles that require everyone’s participation.
The Projects
Woodworking classes usually starts in fifth grade. We begin with concave surfaces by carving a woodworker’s mallet and an egg (much more difficult than it sounds). In sixth grade we add the more difficult convex surfaces by carving a spoon. In seventh grade we apply all these skills in carving a bowl. In eighth grade we add construction concepts by building a three-legged stool complete with mortise and tenon joinery. Many other projects are possible in each grade as time allows.
Students will graduate with an intimate knowledge of wood and traditional woodworking skills. If their interests lead them further on this path, they are well-positioned to become fine artisans capable of creating musical instruments—such as flutes, guitars and violins—or perhaps custom furniture, houses, boats and sculptures.
More importantly, students will have gained the experience of persevering over extended periods of time against daunting challenges, and towards a very distant goal. They will have discovered their own “staying power.” This will serve them well no matter where life leads.