Eighteen-year-old Kingston high school student Katie Babcock likes to work with her hands.

Babcock, who wears overalls, steel-toed boots and a hardhat to class these days, shrugs and says she enjoys tough physical activity and delights in seeing the concrete results of her work. "I'm not interested in an office job," the Grade 12 student adds during a lunch break from class.

Class for Babcock is a 1,200-sq.-ft., three-bedroom raised bungalow in Greenwood Park, a fast-growing new subdivision in the city's east end. She and 14 other high school students from the Greater Kingston area are spending this semester building the bungalow as part of a novel house-building program run by the Limestone District School Board.

Another group of students in another part of the city are building a two-storey home. Three other houses were built by program participants last semester.

Photo by Michael Lea, Business Edge
High school students work on the foundation of the Kingston bungalow they're building through an intern program

In January, the program celebrated building its 50th house in 14 years - a significant accomplishment that its founder believes is taking a bite out of the Kingston area's mounting building-trade skills shortage.

"I think the impact is huge," says Don Voteary, who teaches the carpentry apprenticeship program for high school students and is the founder and project manager of the building construction internship program.

The school board hasn't done any followup research to see how many of the program's students go into the skilled trades, but Voteary, who also teaches at St. Lawrence College, says he believes many do.

"We see them in the field, we see them in various trades as apprentices and when I am at the college I see them two or three years later completing their Phase 1 to Phase 3 (apprenticeship) training."

The board will start surveying students in May when the program holds a student reunion.

The program evolved out of a Limestone school board initiative that had students erecting school portables, and now pairs them with developers to build homes that are just like any other in the city.

Three teachers, including Voteary, supervise groups of Grade 11 and 12 students from the area's two school boards while they build the houses. Typically, one teacher supervises about 15 students. About 100 students from the Limestone District School Board and the neighbouring Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board sign up for the program each year.

They attend class four days a week and receive four credits for taking the one-semester program - two for the construction skills they learn and one each for the English communications and mathematics skills they obtain.

They get to try all aspects of building the house, from crafting the footings and laying the floors and erecting walls and roof, to helping plumbers and electricians install the home's services. The only part of the house they don't help build is the foundations, which are already in place when they arrive.

"The idea is they get to try a little bit of everything," says Bruce Lonneberg, one of the program's three teachers. "They try all sorts of things and hopefully they will find the thing they really like to do and feel they have a passion for it."

Photo by Michael Lea, Business Edge
Katie Babcock and her partner build the knee wall

On this day, Lonneberg and the 15 students under his charge, including Babcock, are assembling the knee walls for the home they're building for developer Marques Homes.

The students have been working on the home for only two weeks and are just learning the ropes of residential construction, but Babcock is already loving it.

She's feeling particularly proud of the work she's done today because she and her building partner put up their portion of the raised bungalow's knee wall - the short framed wall upon which a home's ground floor rests - faster than anyone else.

The following day, they'll lay the floor.

For Babcock, school has never been so much fun and she's already thinking about what kind of apprenticeship she wants to pursue. She's leaning toward earning her electrician's ticket.

In May, when the house is finished, the program will help put her into the co-operative placement of her choice. She'll get to work in the trade that has most interested her during her house-building experience.

In some cases, the students may decide to continue on to another program spearheaded by Voteary at St. Lawrence College, Kingston's community college.

The Limestone board's program allows high school students to earn their first phase of a three-phase carpentry apprenticeship. At the college they earn high school credits and college credits while moving toward becoming a journeyman carpenter.

In four years, the college's carpentry apprenticeship program has grown to 21 participants per year from eight. Each year, every student who successfully completes the program finds an apprenticeship placement, Voteary says.

No doubt about it, there's plenty of work for people who want to break into the home-building industry, says Reg Houde, site supervisor for Marques Homes. Marques is one of seven developers that participate in the house-building program. "We're desperate for tradespeople."

Houde says it's difficult to attract young people into house building because, unlike the construction industry, there are no unions and the money isn't as good. Young people who do go into the house-building trades, however, will find there is plenty of work for them, he adds.

Marques has worked with Limestone's house-building program four times over the last four years and continues to be happy with the student workmanship.

"With the teacher keeping a close eye on them, most of the time they are sold before we finish the houses," Houde says, adding that the only tradeoff is that it takes longer to build the homes.

On the upside, Marques doesn't have to pay as many labourers to do the work and it may help bring a few extra tradespeople into the local workforce.

The house-building program has become so successful that other school boards in Toronto, Belleville and Brockville have asked the Limestone board to help them launch similar programs.

Voteary says the program is as much about building people as it is about building houses.

On the jobsite, the students learn to work in teams, sometimes for the first time. They also learn to be responsible and accountable, as well as communicate with a site supervisor, visiting tradespeople and neighbours. And they learn the mathematics that are necessary to build a home.

"Sometimes I see them battling for the top marks in the class," Voteary says. "Sometimes that's a young person who would never have thought of making that transition to college."

(Frank Armstrong can be reached at armstrong@businessedge.ca)