Doing good (wood)works

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/02/2015 (3919 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

From wooden clocks to guitar-shaped oven removers, the students at Lincoln Middle School are taking woodworking to the next level by building picnic tables for the community.
Neil Penner, the woods teacher at Lincoln Middle School for 13 years, noticed that for one reason or another, Grade 8 students seemed less interested in taking their finished projects home at the end of the year than students in other grades, and started to think outside the box.
“There were really nice tables, clocks, you name it being left behind so I thought, well, let’s shift the focus to community relation stuff and hopefully the kids can get a sense of building things to benefit other people,” Penner said.
In 2008, Penner introduced a group project option targeting the Grade 8 students, both to avoid having an overflowing shop at the end of semester and also to give back to the community. They could either create individual projects to take home at the end of semester, as usual, or collaborate with other classmates to create cedar picnic tables. Penner says each year about 95 per cent of the students opt to participate in the group project.
When the picnic table project initially went underway about seven years ago, the school connected with the United Way. The students laboured for an entire term in groups of about six to help build picnic tables for various organizations around the city. After three years of this, the school brought the project closer to home and started constructing tables for nearby schools to have outdoor seating and open-air workspaces.
This year, the school solidified a new, exciting partnership, one of the city’s main attractions — the Assiniboine Park.
“We have given them six tables already and in another month and a half we are going to give them another six,” said Penner. “So they’re probably getting a total of around 15 tables by the end of this (school) year.”
The woods initiative at Lincoln Middle School has donated approximately 100 tables to the city of Winnipeg since 2008. While the organizations certainly appreciate receiving the beautiful tables, the students enjoy the process as well.
Rachel Wojcik, 13, is in her third year of taking woods at Lincoln Middle School. Wojcik says she opted to take part in the group project because she thought it would be a bit easier having people to help her out and that it would be more enjoyable to work with her classmates than alone.
“It turned out very well. We usually get the boys to cut the wood and then the girls measure it and put it into its places of how it’s supposed to go,” Wojcik said.
She explains how the project is difficult at times, trying to place all the wood and make it all look even, then having to cut the edges of it.
Penner says the tables typically take the entire term to build and that many students have come back to him over the years and expressed the pride they’ve felt seeing their picnic tables in public places or in use.
“I was happy to give it to the community because if I just had it, I don’t know what I would do with it,” Wojcik said. “It’s nice to see other people enjoying a picnic table and I’m hoping it will be a success in the Assiniboine Park.”
The tables are currently in storage but will be set up at various locations in the Assiniboine Park when the snow melts.