First Year Shop Teacher Equipping Students With Construction Skills

Some kids have grown up around woodworking and have a desire to further their skills in a woodshop class, while other find their way there simply to fill a class schedule. Every student in Gene Castillo’s woodshop classes at Roseburg High School, from Intro to Advanced Woodshop, is learning the skills they need to step into a construction site comfortably. Castillo just wrapped up his first full year teaching woodshop. He came from 37 years of working in the industry as a tile setter and contractor. He was working at Home Depot when he got a call from Roseburg Public Schools asking him to apply for the open woodshop teacher position. He said teaching was not on his radar. “Never would have thought it in a million years,” Castillo said. “If you would have asked me this last April, I would have said 'no way.' I'm still figuring out all my ways. I know there are teachers who are doing it. It's slow and I get frustrated because I'm a perfectionist and I'm not where I think I should be. I should be so much farther along, but then I've got comments from other people, students, and a variety of other people that my intro kids are so far above expectations. Most all of my kids run all of these tools.” The previous woodshop teacher focused on the cabinetry side of woodshop, while Castillo uses his background in contracting to teach skills in framing and finishing work. In his perfect setup, there would be another class and teacher for carpentry and construction technology. However, according to CTE Program Director Sheri Carson, Roseburg High school is still building up from the early 2000s when schools nationwide were cutting CTE programs. “Years ago, we had 13 CTE programs,” Carson said. “In the early 2000s when the push was ‘everyone's going to college,’ we lost six programs. We've slowly been building them back up. When they started cutting CTE programs, they cut the college portion that trained them. Educators pretty much have to come from their respective industries. Obviously, you can make more in industry than you can as a teacher, so they have to have the passion and want to do it. Then there are classes they have to take while they are building their program so they can get their teaching license.” RHS has increased its CTE program offerings to nine. Some of those original 13 won’t come back as they’ve been combined with another program or are irrelevant. There are other new programs that Carson is looking forward to adding and building, such as an EMT fire science program to the health occupations program. “I feel good about them,” Carson said. “They are strong programs. Most of them have been around now for quite a while, except for the very new ones, but the teachers are picking it up. They are trying to train 28 kids on how to do something when you've mainly worked with adults who already have an understanding or maybe you were training them one-on-one.” Assistant Principal Adam Blue is the administrator responsible for the CTE programs. Castillo said he leaned on Blue when he felt like he couldn’t handle the students. Blue said Castillo is doing a great job transferring from industry to education and preparing students to leave with skills, whether that’s in a community college, vocational training, four-year college, or straight into the workforce. “I'm a firm believer in options and open doors,” Blue said. “Develop some skills and understanding, because you never know what's going to happen down the road or what opportunities are going to open up to you. When you have those skills, you can take those opportunities that open up to you. That's what we try to provide.” The high school graduation rate for CTE concentrators is about 90% – higher than the national average, regardless of whether students pursue a related career or go to a four-year university according to the Oregon Department of Education. A high quality CTE program teaches more than the technical skills. The programs teach behaviors and mindsets necessary to succeed. Alexis Chaffee just completed her junior year and almost switched out of the class at the beginning, but she fell in love with making things. She looked forward to coming to school. Having her favorite class first period helped, she said. “This is my favorite class,” Chaffee said. “I just want to stay here all day. If you even have a thought about taking it, don't second-guess it, just do it. It's just a different experience. It's something kids can do that's hands-on and they can learn a whole bunch of new things.” Castillo admitted that there are significant differences between working in the industry and teaching. He can't fire a student who isn't giving full effort or doing his best work. He also has a bigger class than he ever had a crew of new employees. He doesn’t have the time to work with each individual student the way he wants to, so this semester, he had a handful of student aids to use the knowledge he’s given them to help others. “It helps me a ton,” Castillo said. “Now that they've been through the class, they can teach half of the class. Intro to woodshop is the biggest class and goes up to 28 kids. I have a minute and a half per kid per day. About eight and a half minutes a week is all the time I have for one-on-one instruction, to actually teach them to do something, which makes it extremely hard.” Emma Hargraves just finished her junior year and spent both semesters in Castillo’s classes. She took Intro to Woods with the previous woodshop teacher, and they didn’t click, so she didn’t come back. She was placed in the class at the beginning of the school year and she fell in love with woodworking again. For the spring semester, she was an aid in his fifth-period class. “It's one of the main reasons I show up to school every single day,” Hargraves said. “He went through the whole class, taught us how to use the machines, and made us each do a safety course. Now even if we need help, we’re like, hey, I’m not comfortable, and he does it. I think it’s kind of an honor to have him ask us personally [to be his aids] instead of us having to ask.” Castillo keeps the atmosphere light in his classroom, but he takes safety very seriously. He walks students through each step and moves around the large room checking in on projects and making sure everyone is doing everything safely. He is looking forward to doing a pre-apprenticeship program, but won’t pursue it until he knows his students can represent the program well. “My philosophy on that is, when you get out in the real world, it's not easy out there,” Castillo said. “It's a dog-eat-dog world and if you don't have thick skin, you're not going to make it, especially in construction. We can't coddle these kids anymore. They have to have thick skin or they're going to fail; they're going to fall right on their faces. We're supposed to get them prepared for life and how to survive on their own.” In the meantime, he’s enjoying the moments when students start to see the joy in woodworking. “All of a sudden, you see that glint in their eye,” Castillo said. “That's cool. With these ones who've never been able to put anything together before, that's really cool. That's what makes it worth it. That's what makes me want to get up to come in here.” *** 1st photo: Alexis Chaffee, 12th, right, helps Dessirae Williams, 10th, work on building a step stool. Chaffee was a teacher's aid in the first period class in the spring semester. 2nd photo: Gene Castillo shows Isiah Parks, 10th grade, the next step in his woodworking project. Castillo just finished his first year as a high school woodshop teacher after decades working in the industry. 3rd photo: Emma Pate-Smith shows off her work fixing a cutting board with wood filler. She took woodshop in her senior year.