GALION — Students in Bruce Weirich’s Advanced Woodworking class at Galion High School were tasked with a project from Galion Superintendent Jennifer Allerding to design and build picnic tables for different areas of the school district’s campus.
The results are eight beautiful new picnic tables at the district’s soccer fields, at Unckrich Stadium in Heise Park, and other select areas around campus.
“My classes have built picnic tables in the past,” Weirich said. “Students in my Advanced Woodworking class did a great job designing and building these tables.”
Weirich’s students developed a “mass production” setup. Students first cut all the pieces needed to build the tables, and groups of three students took their parts and assembled their respective tables.
“Building the tables in this manner was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle,” Weirich said. “I’m really proud of my students.”
Once the tables were completed, Weirich distributed ballots to the staff at Galion High School and asked them to judge the picnic tables. Staff members wrote down their first and second choices during the judging period.
“I asked the teachers to judge the tables based on which one they would want to take home,” Weirich said. “The staff did a great job judging the tables and we found out who our first and second place winners were for the competition.
”When the judging was complete, GHS students Brodyn Butcher, Carter Dominy, and JadenScott were the first-place winners as selected by the high school staff. When asked about thebest part of the project, each student had a unique answer.
“The best part of the project was learning how to work together as a team,” Butcher said.“For me, it was learning how to work as part of a team and learning how to build a picnic table,” Carter Dominy explained.
And JadenScott’s response to the question was one simple word, “Winning!”
All the materials for the project were purchased at Lowe’s. Brodyn, Carter, and Jadeneach received a brand-newwork bag, complete with many tools they canuse to build projects on their own.
