At the end of the school day, most Falls High School students are lined up at the classroom door minutes before the bell rings signaling their release from schedules and testing. But for students in Dave Olson’s concurrent enrollment welding class, every second of class time was put to use.
The welding class, which earns students college credits while still in high school, along with Olson’s Hot Metals II class, last week was in the final stages of a semester-long project the students were completing for the International Falls Fire Department.
“Usually we’ve built trailers and other small things,” Olson said of the group.
This year, however, Olson wanted a new, challenging project. He contacted Fire Chief Jerry Jensen about building the department a smoker and grill.
“The fire department thought it was a great idea,” Olson said. “They had a personal fund they put together out of their own pockets for this project. They paid for the materials and we started building.”
In the 18 years Olson has been a FHS teacher, he said he has never spearheaded a project quite like the smoker and was unsure of an exact design. Research led him to a website, www.smokerbuilder.com, and he said he contacted a few of the site’s welders who ended up donating a design for the project.
“They thought it was a good project and they gave us a design for free,” Olson said. “We’ve been sending pictures and updating them on our progress along the way and have had a lot of positive reinforcement from these guys who do it professionally.”
Making learning fun
Because the class started the project with a piece of pipe and a pile of iron, Olson said the students were “a little unsure” of what the final outcome could be at first.
“I don’t think they could envision the finished product like I could,” he said.
Soon, however, the pile of iron was cut, welded, bent, painted and transformed into a project Olson said “ has turned out great.”
Dustin Helgeson, a junior in the welding class, agreed.
“It turned out a lot better than I expected,” he said.
Adam Larson, also a junior student, said working together as a class and as a team has been one of the best parts of the learning experience.
“It was great to work together as a group,” he said.
Both students have taken a metals class for three years and agreed the smoker was the biggest project they’ve worked on. And the one they are most proud of.
“Pretty much the whole school has seen it,” Larson said.
Olson admits the smoker required a lot of involvement and from him and he used the experience to educate himself, too.
“It was exciting because I’ve never made something like this before,” he said.
State help
Olson mentioned that one of the reasons the project was made possible was through dollars funded to the school by the state of Minnesota through an Applied Learning Initiative.
ALI programs are collaborative efforts between high schools and community and technical colleges in northeast Minnesota.
“Through ALI, our metal and wood shop has been equipped with new equipment over the last five years,” Olson said.
He added that the program recognized the demand of industry workers and aims to equip schools with necessary tools to give students early-on knowledge to be successful in an industry field.
A CNC plasma cutter purchased with a portion of the funding played a big role in the smoker project, Olson noted.
“We were able to draw designs on the computer and the (plasma cutter) cut them out of metal for us,” he said.
Successful outcome
Comments made among fire department personnel after the smoker was finished and delivered May 24 were positive and the class was recognized for their efforts.
“The only thing we would change is to have something on the front saying who made this for us,” Jensen said. “You guys should be proud of this. It is quite a project.”
Mayor Bob Anderson told students May 24 that the knowledge they have gained from working on such a project would be useful to them beyond the classroom.
“You should indeed be proud,” he said.
