Gaining ‘solid’ experience
Tri Star junior construction students learn to work with concrete
CELINA — As the sun rose over Tri Star Career Compact’s animal science barn friday morning, two trucks from St. Henry Tile Co. pulled in, loaded with concrete to finish connecting the barn to the rest of the parking lot. But it wasn’t a crew from St. Henry Tile that did the work.
Instead, that job became a teaching experience for the school’s junior construction class.
While Tri Star senior construction students get to build a house every year, usually the juniors are practicing their skills on mockups inside the program’s workshop. This year is a little different because of the extra work needed to finish the barn for the animal science program.
“This is much more real-world experience for these kids,” said construction teacher Brett McGillvary. “In the real world you don’t build something just to tear it apart. Yes, we have to do it that way or else we’d run out of room really fast (inside) but it’s not the same as making something you can come back and see in a few years.”
Although he is in charge of the entire construction program, McGillvary’s background is in concrete, having worked for Shinn Brothers, Inc. before starting at Tri Star. Having poured concrete many times before, McGillvary set things up for the kids and gave them a few pointers to get started but the main thing he wanted was for kids to get the experience doing it themselves so he took a more hands-off approach.
“While it’s wet, they aren’t going to hurt the it so I’m letting them play with it a bit to see what happens when they use different tools on it,” he said. “I’ll give them tips here and there and there’s a few kids who have poured concrete before — we have one kid who worked for Klosterman Concrete
this summer — and you can tell they’re being leaders and showing the others what to do and I think that’s an important part of all of this work. The kids not only learn from me but also from each other, just like they would on any other job site only here it doesn’t really matter if they make a mistake because we can get it fixed right away.
“Plus if they make a mistake, they’re more likely to remember how to do it better the next time instead of me telling them exactly what to do where it might not click in their heads.”
McGillvary also noted that projects such as this give the kids a chance to show potential future employers that construction is in good hands.
“When these guys showed up this morning to help us pour the concrete, they were a little worried about how we would get it all done with 21 high schoolers,” he said. “Once we got started and the kids went to work, the guys from St. Henry Tile settled down a bit.
“These guys are getting a little older every year and it’s good for them to see that things will be taken care of by this new group of younger guys when they’re ready to retire or as they move
up the ladder.”
As the construction students were gaining knowledge, Tri Star was able to save a little money by keeping the labor in-house. Tri Star Director Tim Buschur stated the school was able to save about $4,000 that it can put toward materials and equipment for the future.
While the main structure of the barn was installed by a contractor over the summer, the majority of outfitting and finishing the barn falls to the students in several of the programs offered at Tri Star. Buschur said the construction class handled the concrete work as well as building a storage room, installing fencing and any other tasks they can help with. He noted that the new cybersecurity class will be installing and monitoring security systems for the facility while early childhood education will be able to hold petting zoos in the future.
“It’s not just a building for only one program,” Buschur said. “It’s really a cross-curricular facility and it’s good to get the different programs working together in the building because when they get out into their jobs, they’re going to be working with people from different industries and this helps prepare them for that.”