Many high schoolers have projects, like the baking soda volcano for the yearly science fair or the egg baby experiment, but students in Montgomery County, Maryland, have taken it to the next level.
Through a 50-year-old nonprofit 501(c)(3) program, students across Montgomery County can take part in the construction programs at Edison High School or Seneca Valley High School.
On Tuesday, the group unveiled the 44th student-designed and built house in the Maryland county.
Over the last two years, 600 students worked to build the Silver Spring house at 12402 O’Fallon Street, which is expected to go on the market for $799,000.
The Montgomery County Students Construction Trades Foundation and Montgomery County Public Schools hosted the Young American 44 Cornerstone Celebration in the driveway and front yard of the newly built house in Silver Spring.
“Day one, it was a hole in the ground,” senior Tamir Satterwhite said. “I cannot describe the happiness and joy I feel for being able to give people tours of this house that I built.”
Soon, Satterwhite will graduate from Rockville High School and plans to attend Montgomery College for carpentry and psychology.
Satterwhite, who proves Construction Trades Foundation’s motto of “build a successful future,” spent two years working as a carpenter, “building it from base to board.”
During the ceremony, students stood smiling with pride as Steve Boden, the foundation’s supervisor, told 小萝莉影视 that the program is “where kids can learn and explore and actually be immersed in the career of construction technology.”
“The carpentry students have framed the house, the plumbers have plumbed it, the electrical students have wired it,” Boden said. “The bricklaying students and HVAC students have done their contribution.”
The program had a diverse group of students working on the house, including former theater kids.
That’s how Montgomery Blair High School student Rowen Collins described herself as she pointed out the fireplace she worked on.
“I did the floor we’re standing on, the walls around us, but I also did the siding and all the finishing details,” Collins said.
“I will be at Frostburg State University, studying technical theater, as well as doing handyman work to build up the grounds of what I hope to become my business.”
Collins plans to start a business that will be a “by women, for women” construction company that would cater to women “who are maybe uncomfortable having men they don’t know in their homes.”
“One of my biggest goals in life is to get more women into the trades and just into having basic repair skills,” Collins said.
As the students gave their families a tour around the house, you could hear the emotion in their parents’ voices when they spoke to them. Livingston Rowe looked around the bathroom with the massive tub and walk-in shower, and said to his son Judah, “your grandfather would be so proud.”
“My father was a general contractor,” Livingston said. “To see any man who can build a house, you have to give him much respect. And today I’m very proud of him.”
Judah Rowe, who attends Albert Einstein High School, said hearing those words made him “very happy” and that his favorite part of the process was meeting so many “amazing people from different schools.”
“I always loved working with my hands, but it was definitely the experience of working with others that made it the best for me,” Judah said.
In the kitchen, John Clark, a masonry teacher at Thomas Edison High School, watched as students and families moved through the house, which he also had a big part in building.
“The kids get a lot out of this, and it’s basically the experience, the knowledge and we prepare them for the real world,” Clark said.
“My students in masonry have already been offered $30 an hour, and I don’t know a whole lot of 18-year-olds that can go out and start a job at $30 an hour.”
Clark pointed out that it’s a job that a “computer or AI can’t take away.”
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