EUREKA — High school students in Eureka have built tiny homes from the ground up to learn real-life skills and establish a new self-sustaining program.
“It really like brings together the perspective of how much work it takes, and not just how much work, it's how many different specialties there are. And really it was just a big group effort and you really get to see all the different people and everything that comes into play with building a house because it's not just framers and painters. It's a bunch of other stuff,” said Lincoln County High School junior Caleb Ravitch.
This is the first year that Lincoln County High School has offered the students the opportunity to learn to build a house.
“I basically took this class because I wanted to learn more about building in general and I already knew a lot from my dad, my dad taught me a lot of things. I really took this class to just extend my education in the trade and hopefully, maybe I can get a job or start my own company with this kind of stuff,” said LCHS sophomore Ethan Kovalenko.
The school used leftover COVID-19 funding to buy the materials for the tiny homes. But as with all new classes, there has been a learning curve.
“It's different because all of them are coming from different amounts of background knowledge a lot of them have had shop class, things like that, but it is a lot of different things. And sometimes they think things take too long and attention spans sometimes drift and other times they do super well and things go great,” said LCHS Building Trades Instructor Brian Yarus.
Tradesmen from the Eureka area came in to help the students learn a specific skill and make sure the construction was done properly.
“It really shows a lot of support because, from my experience playing football, we have a massive community supporting the football players. And even in every sport, we have a lot of community support. But it's really nice to see in a more academic setting, how the community is coming together to help students learn, especially learn real-life skills like you do when you build a house,” said Ravitch.
Although these are tiny homes, the same skills are used to build a full-size home and students have had to complete every step, from the foundation to the paint.
“It's a good feeling. I have some pictures of when we were first putting up the walls on the framing. And I have some pictures of me doing drywall and insulation, and now it's at the very end we're starting to put up trim and paint. I like the thought of me being able to be a part of this whole thing,” said Kovalenko.
The two 384-square-foot homes will be auctioned off on July 1, 2023, in hopes of raising enough money to purchase materials for next year and create a self-sustaining program.
“It's nice to see the light bulb go off in their heads and do really well with things, it's nice. I mean just to be doing anything that helps somebody to learn something new is great. And this is my first year of being involved with teaching like that, so it's a lot of new things. But that's that is the high point of it,” said Yarus.
