SAN ANTONIO – It is not your dad’s wood-shop class anymore. There is a lot more to it at the Construction Careers Academy on the campus of Warren High School
Students have gone from building birdhouses and shelves to building houses -- the popular kind of tiny house you see on TV shows. The buildings sit on 4-6 trailer wheels and are usually around 200 square feet. Some have lofts for beds and full bathrooms, other just showers and toilets in the bath, and a kitchen sink right outside the door.
It is a new craze in construction and the students like being a part of it.
The workers are not just guys any more either; there are also young ladies who want to make construction a career.
"I want to start planning jobs. It is something that I am really interested in. I am typically really good with the management type stuff," Karin Karlin, a senior, said.
There are students who want to be painters, plumbers or electricians.
Antonio Reyes is the lead electrician on one of the houses. He is responsible for making sure when the owner hits the switch, the lights come on.
"It's a big deal,” Reyes said of his job. “(People) can't be walking around in the dark, bumping into things. So I take that as a big deal and I want to make sure everything is right."
Reyes is making sure the electric work is done, while others oversee and participate in all facets of getting the house built.
They use all the necessary tools, from table saws to electric sanders.
Some houses have stucco wall while others are sheathed in siding.
The students started the houses from scratch and are building them in order to show them off a sell them one day.
"We just started from nothing and to see that we just built something from the ground up, it's really awesome," Karlin said.
They may be building tiny houses but their ambitions are big.
"Get myself ready to go out into the real world and apply these things to something I am going to be doing as long as I will be," Reyes said.