Vision Tech. Ed. Class Helps Throughout the Community

HUHS’s Vision technology education class works on projects throughout the community to further their skills in construction, but because of COVID some challenges have arised.

In the upper level Vision class, students are able to use their skills to build various things for the community. From a shed for a retirement home, to stairs for custodians, to additions on Erin School and more.

“[The projects] gives the Vision students a chance to leave a little bit of a legacy for future students,” Tech. Ed. teacher and Vision supervisor Mark Murphy said. “It gives them a chance to practice plumbing, framing, demolition, cabinet making and organizational skills.”

Senior Peyton Barker, who worked on the shed and Erin addition, is taking Vision for his second year and he enjoys it because it is hands on and he is able to use his skills.

Barker said the projects the class has done this year are different and more challenging because of COVID.

“Our communication with the customers is different because whether they are quarantined, or scared of COVID we can't get as much communication as we are looking for,” Barker said. “Not everyone is looking for projects to get done with COVID going on because they do not want many people over.”

Senior Tyler Rakowski worked on stairs for the custodians. He agrees that COVID has made some aspects of this year's class challenging.

“COVID has really hurt our opportunity to go to a lot of places either because certain families were concerned or someone we we’re going to work for got something,” Rakowski said.

Because of COVID, one of their projects initially planned last spring had to be moved to the beginning of this year. The Vision class completed projects for physics teacher Michael Yohn and agriculture sciences teachers Kim Yohn in September and October. The class was only supposed to start with rebuilding a gazebo roof, but other problems became apparent when they started construction.

“It was supposed to be a much smaller project, until they found all the problems with that gazebo roof and had to really redo the whole thing,” Yohn said.

The Vision class not only redid the roof of a gazebo, it also rebuilt a step and replaced support beams. These projects took the class about two months to complete, and according to Yohn they were done well.

“They were wonderful to work with,” physics teacher Yohn said. “They were great at asking for our feedback and our opinions and giving us different options and talking through things with us.”

Rather than being done by professionals, the project was done by the students which made it more enjoyable for Yohn.

“It's kind of cool because when I see some of the students in school they ask how's [the gazebo] doing, which definitely is not the experience you would get with a company,” agriculture science teacher Yohn said. “It’s also fun to see how much pride the students took in their work; it made it really satisfying as a teacher.”

Because this class is only paid for work experience and are not able to make a profit, they were given a donation, food, and speed squares from the Yohns.

“[In the future] hopefully we will move onto building houses and furthering our construction into more of a business that we can spread the name out to the community,” Barker said.

The class is currently working on building a plumbing unit sectional that will be used for Home Maintenance and Residential Construction Interiors.

“Eventually that deck area will have five toilets and five vanity sinks for students to practice plumbing skills on,” Murphy said.