Woodworking in schools remains important for a number of reasons. Woodworking teaches children basic and advanced hand-eye coordination while the brain is still developing. Children and adolescents can learn abstract thinking skills that allow for better coordination between visual cues, tactile cues and mental images. It is wonderful to see the growing enthusiasm for woodwork across the UK within the early childhood education sector.
Working with real tools offers children new experiences and encompasses all areas of learning and development. Woodworking enables children to become the innovators, makers, sculptors, handymen, engineers and architects of tomorrow. The experience of woodworking leaves a profound memory. Once they have learned to work with tools, they become part of the children’s DNA.
How are high school woodworking instructors coping with the unprecedented challenges of teaching their students during the COVID-19 crisis? How many are teaching classroom courses this fall versus distance learning? And depending on whether they can teach face-to-face or online, what is the focus of their lesson plans? The answers are as complex as the questions. Most aspects of cabinetmaking and furniture making have undergone not just technological advances, but real revolutions over the last decade. For example, virtually all carving production is now done with CNC routers or engravers. But there are still many practical and customised tasks that require training.
And improving physical skills is probably not the main value of formal classes. Getting feedback from an experienced instructor on different ways to design, join, assemble and finish can open a woodworker’s eyes and mind to new ways of problem solving. As Gleave pointed out, he can even go back to the shop and teach the old-timers something new. And any novice will undoubtedly gain confidence on campus and likely develop a thirst to master more tasks.
Enrolments in woodworking courses 46 e instructors said they had 41 or more students in their courses this fall. From a strictly for-profit perspective, it is critical for the employer to identify a specific need and address it directly, rather than trying to mould the best woodworkers. Woodworking is a wonderful medium for expressive art and creative design, and also has the advantage of encompassing many other areas of learning and development, providing a truly cross-disciplinary activity. However, there are schools where pupils are still required to learn basic woodworking skills.
The secret to keeping children truly engaged in woodworking is for them to follow their own interests and solve their own problems to create their work. Teaching woodworking online It goes without saying that it is difficult to teach high school students woodworking when they cannot get hands-on experience in the school woodshop. Today, teachers who teach woodworking classes regularly see exceptional levels of engagement, with deep attention and concentration accompanied by persistence and perseverance with challenging tasks – especially with complex problem solving. In these bastions of traditional skills, it is recognised that woodworking as a career is changing.
Woodworking has a significant impact on children’s self-esteem and confidence and develops a sense of agency – that ‘can do mentality’. Many are surprised by the idea of young children working with real tools, but woodworking has a long tradition in early childhood education dating back to Froebel’s kindergarten days. Although there is no quick fix, many woodworking teachers are convinced that getting pupils to work with their hands and not just their heads would help. The children’s behaviour is exemplary at the woodwork bench: they are engaged and doing something they enjoy.
But carpentry is not just about what the children do, it is about the changes that take place in the child.