Mendocino High School shares student work with the community
The Mendocino Community High School buzzed with excitement and creative energy on Saturday evening, December 9th, during the Mendocino High School's Career Technical Education Winter fundraiser and Showcase. This annual event is growing each year, and this year was no exception. The goal is to share with the community all of the amazing work created by the students during their fall semester, enable the students to learn to talk about their work and communicate with potential customers about their work, generate some funds for the programs, and also have fun and participate in creating holiday spirit in their community.
Attendees were greeted by the Culinary Food truck parked along the path of the Community School. The converted popup VW bus is a work of art in its own right, and the cheerful culinary students sold hot soup and rolls along with cookies to warm up the crowd. As the high school is being renovated, Carolen Barrett has been teaching culinary in a makeshift space, and though it hasn't been easy, the food truck has been a perfectly delicious and serendipitous outcome. The culinary students are learning a whole new skill set of preparing and selling food from the food truck.
Upon entering the communal space, it wasn't easy to choose where to look — there were smiling, proud students all about and beautiful things to see in every direction. The horticulture pathway, led by Alex Fosse, had displays of succulents and vegetable starts. The garden section was lush and fresh, filled with gorgeous displays of plants of all sorts.
The art department had a wide range of items on display and sale, ranging from beautifully glazed ceramic to handmade greeting cards with photos taken by the photography students to copper earrings. Printed tote bags that were super creative and wellmade were available for purchase. Eric Rain and his students have been busy creating art in so many different media this fall.
One typically thinks of the woodwork to be in muted brown tones, but the students of the woodworking program had designed and built incredible clipboards and cutting boards utilizing all kinds of strikingly colorful wood species.
The students were eager to tell the visitors about the woods they had used, from locally grown Acacia generously donated by a local resident to cherry wood, to purple heart (which was actually bright purple) to poplar, which has a green hue. There were finely turned objects and jars with fitted lids, as some students have spent the semester working on the lathes. The woodworking program, led by Taimi Barty, is a three-year program where the students learn to design and build furniture and objects out of wood.
The Media and Electronics departments, led by Marshall Brown and Francis Rutherford, had displays of their work in an adjacent room. Students demonstrated a robot that moved with the use of a remote wielding its way around gravity-defying balsa wood towers and a 3-D printer. Media students were broadcasting a radio show on KAKX.org 88.3 FM, Student Powered Radio. Again, the room was buzzing with creative energy.
The event was inspiring and heartwarming, not to be missed. A major purpose of the CTE program is to expose students to a trade that they can pursue after high school or use as background knowledge while furthering their education. By attending this event, members of our community can see what our local students are capable of and possibly be inspired to find a way to become involved as a mentor, provide a job shadow, or take on an intern. As the saying goes, “It takes a village.”