Kits help kids learn with hands
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
KAPOLEI — Half a dozen children in Derwin Gaboya's fifth-grade class at Kapolei Elementary School have relatives in the construction industry but only one of the 20 students is even remotely considering a construction career.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
Most of the 9- to 11-year-old students nevertheless said their favorite class work involves working with their hands. And last week they were busy building miniature bridge supports out of paper and testing which shape — cylinder, rectangle or triangle — can bear the most weight.
Derwin Gaboya, a fifth-grade teacher at Kapolei Elementary School, uses a "Build Up!" kit donated by the Hawai'i Carpenters Union as an educational tool in his classroom. His students, Matthew Daems, left, Lauren Asato and Chalei Pollard-Kailikea, all 10, were testing the load-carrying abilities of triangles, cylinders and rectangles. The students said they enjoy school work that lets them build things.
The exercise was one of dozens that sprung out of a yellow plastic tool box donated this fall by the Hawai'i Carpenters Union to about 15 O'ahu elementary and middle-school classrooms to try to dispel stereotypes about construction work and the people who choose it as a career.
"Children start discounting occupations starting at the fifth-grade level," said Ron Taketa, financial secretary and business representative for the carpenters union. "By the time we come along at the high-school level (to recruit apprentices), unbeknownst to us, a lot of the career decisions have been made."
None of the children in Gaboya's class dreams of a construction job.
Chalei Pollard-Kailikea, 10, plans on becoming an astronaut, "space scientist" or teacher. Briani Somera, 10, hopes to be a teacher, doctor or nurse. Eric Turner, 11, someday hopes to play wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers. Kainoa Kekina, 10, wants to become an FBI agent.
But they all have something in common: They like school work that lets them build something — especially Keanu Scheer, who is 10 1/2.
"I don't like writing," Keanu said. "I like making things. It's fun."
The Hawai'i Carpenters Union — the Islands dominant construction union in terms of members — is donating the $200 "Build Up!" kits at a time when trade unions are scrambling to recruit and train enough qualified workers to keep up with a construction boom expected to last at least a decade.
But the carpenters insist the kits are not intended as a blue-collar recruiting tool, Taketa said.
The guts of the kits are little more than popsicle sticks, construction paper "and rubber bands and twisties," Taketa said. But the key is a booklet full of lesson plans based on national academic standards that touch on a variety of basic school subjects, such as history, social studies, science and math.
"If we go in with the idea of getting better apprentices, the school system won't take to the program," Taketa said. "There is no push at all that we want the students to be carpenters."
To obtain a "Build Up!" kit, call the Hawai'i Carpenters Union at 847-5761, Ext. 126 and ask for Ron Taketa.
The carpenters union has received thank you letters from Department of Education officials from Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto on down.
For a free kit
The 15 kits passed out so far on O'ahu are among more than 10,000 distributed across the country since 1998 through the Associated General Contractors of America.
The original goal back in 1995 was to raise the image of construction workers. But public relations officials told the AGC "that for practical purposes that was an impossible task," said John Heffner, the group's executive director for training and educational services.
The AGC instead partnered with Scholastic, an educational name brand, to develop hands-on kits that tie together all of the basic classroom disciplines and are based on the national standards curriculum, Heffner said.
"I don't think anybody would consider this as a recruitment approach," Heffner said. "But we've heard from some teachers that there are lots of industries that are suffering shortages of workers and they are approaching the schools. They've actually gone in with sales material trying to sell young people on their career."
Mike Miyamura, Kapolei Elementary's principal, eagerly accepted the eight kits his school received from the carpenters union after Miyamura poked around inside and talked to his teachers.
"Everybody was enthusiastic," Miyamura said. "The kit touches on science and it touches on math and it touches on social studies."
In the classroom, Gaboya — one of seven fifth-grade teachers at Kapolei Elementary — appreciates the emphasis on having students build things.
"It works with a lot of kids," said Gaboya, 28. "Hands-on is one way I learned and it got me motivated to learn even more."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8085.
