St. Albert Public students will be building full-scale homes this fall as part of a new program that combines coursework with construction.
St. Albert Public Grade 9 students will learn about the new Building Futures program at their schools this April 5. Their parents will hear about it at a similar presentation April 11.
Building Futures is a new program slated to launch this September for Grade 10 students, said Bill Turnham, career education co-ordinator for St. Albert Public. The program will see about 20 students work with contractors employed by Encore Master Builder to build a full-sized house.
“They take their classes right on site,” Turnham said, and learn about framing, plumbing, and other aspects of construction directly from professionals.
Turnham said students will spend about half the day taking core courses with teachers in an on-site garage and the other building the house with the guidance of tradespeople. Students will wear full protective gear and follow industry-standard safety rules, and will not be allowed to do roofing or climb more than six feet off the ground.
Turner said this program should help students gain valuable construction and teamwork skills they can apply in the trades or home maintenance.
“It really does fit hands-on learning to a T.”
Trades garden
Turner said St. Albert Public has partnered with the Build Alberta Apprenticeships Foundation to bring this program to this city.
Foundation head Mike Lees said Building Futures started in 2013 as a partnership between McKee Homes and Rocky View Schools in Airdrie. Coventry Homes partnered with the Parkland School Division to roll out the program there in 2019.
Lee was a long-time contractor with Coventry and the program’s framing instructor in Parkland. Impressed by the program’s effect on students, Lee said he convinced Coventry to establish a foundation (the one he now leads) to expand the program province-wide.
Lee and Turnham said students in this program typically build single-family homes or duplexes. The homes sell at commercial rates, but take about three months longer to build.
Lee said Building Futures could help Alberta solve its shortage of skilled tradespersons if it were rolled out province-wide. Twelve of the 22 Parkland students who went through the program last year have now joined the province’s Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP) to train as tradespeople. About 44 per cent of the Parkland program’s students in the last three years got hired by the program’s contractors — three of them after just a week on site.
“It’s a very real trades garden,” Lee said of the program, in that it grows new tradespeople.
Memorial Composite Grade 10 student Taydyn Robertson said she signed up for Building Futures last September to learn skills that might prove handy around her family’s ranch. She and her classmates have spent the year pouring concrete, building frames, and insulating walls for a home at a construction site in Spruce Grove.
“We’re working on finishing for the drywall right now,” she said, speaking by phone from the construction site.
Robertson said Building Futures was a great way for students to earn a lot of high school credits in a single year (up to 75 of the 100 required for graduation) and make their Grades 11 and 12 schedules more flexible. You do have to like the outdoors, though, and you need a healthy tolerance for dirt.
Robertson said she was excited to show her parents her work once the house was built.
“It’ll be kind of cool one day to drive by and point out to people that you built that house.”
St. Albert Public will host a presentation on Building Futures at Bellerose Composite on April 11 at 6:30 p.m.
