The House
That
Students
Built
by Luke L. Patrenella, Jr.
Each summer in Tyler, Tex., a schoolteacher goes hunting
for a residential building lot on which his students
can erect a three-bedroom house as part of their two
year training in the building-trades program of Tyler High
School. Come Fall, D. A. McRae and his students begin
construction, and prospective buyers start appearing.
For each of the past eight years, students have built houses
with money from an unlimited revolving fund provided by the
Tyler Independent School District. The profit has outfitted the
students in work clothes, paid their expenses to district and
state vocational industrial club meetings, and purchased new
equipment for the program. One year, the surplus money
bought a truck which carries students
and equipment to the construction site.
Tyler's building-trades program affords practical experience
to five other student groups. Blueprints are developed by
students in mechanical drawing classes. Metal-trades
students design and weld ornamental iron posts. Landscaping
is done by vocational agriculture students. Homemaking
girls furnish the house, and girls in the secretarial training
classes handle the correspondence.
The program's first aim, McRae says, is "to teach the boys how
to get along with the people for whom they are working."
Apparently the training has stuck. A Tyler contractor who
hired one of the students as a bricklayer said, "That
young man has one of the best attitudes of any
employee I've ever hired!"
High-school students in Tyler, Tex., built this red Mexican adobe brick home valued at $16,000.
Miss Mary Jernigin's mechanical drawing classes
set up blueprints and models in Spring semester.
In Fall, seven skilled trade classes take over,
using building materials most popular in area.
Carpenters and cabinetmakers as-well as paint
ers, plumbers, electricians learn their skills.
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Local contractors are high in their praise for
Tyler students like these future metal workers.
Vocational agriculture students in landscaping
plant cherry laurel tree before plotting grass.
Homemaking students, operating on budget, fur
nish home on temporary basis for "Open House.
14
Family Weekly, February 16, 195S