What’s next
Evergreen Habitat for Humanity will launch its new construction project at 1:15 p.m. Thursday at Evergreen High School, 14300 N.E. 18th St., with Bank of America becoming a partner for the first time. This is Habitat’s third year partnering with Evergreen High School.
Evergreen junior Ryan Newman was among dozens of students who worked on separate projects last year at Mountain View and Evergreen high schools.
On Friday, it all came together — literally. Those two class projects came together to make a house.
Evergreen Habitat for Humanity moved two halves of a modular home built on the two high school campuses and joined them on a foundation at 3603 O St.
After finishing touches are wrapped up, probably in December, it will become the home for Charles and Michelle Frost and their family. The Frosts and one of their three children, 2-year-old Charles Deacon Frost, were on hand Friday to watch their dream of a new home become a reality.
“That didn’t dawn on me for a while,” said Newman, who worked on the house during his sophomore year. “It was just a project.”
Then, as things took shape, came the realization: “Oh, yeah! We’re building a house,” Newman said.
The students’ home work, so to speak, is the result of a class called “Geometry in Construction.” Each school session includes one hour of math, followed by one hour of construction classes per day. Students can take their geometry and algebra skills right to the job site.
“I got to see how math was used in real-world applications,” Newman said.
That is an important factor, said Anita Jinks, the school district’s coordinator for the program.
“We can measure learning styles, and most students are kinesthetic learners” — they learn best by doing things, Jinks said. “Most of our teaching is auditory.”
This year, Newman is a teaching assistant in the class at Evergreen. It’s team-taught by math instructor Zack Burdick and Bill Culver, construction technology teacher.
The classroom features shelves of tool belts and hard hats — most in white, but a few in pink.
The two teachers spent part of the classroom session discussing different approaches to the question of precision in calculations. After Burdick’s lesson on the most precise method for determining square roots, Culver brought a real-world touch to the discussion.
“Our tape measures don’t have square roots in them,” Culver reminded the 50 or so students. “We use different applications for different situations.”
Charles Frost was doing some math of his own as he watched the two halves become a home.
Habitat homes are sold at no profit with a no-interest mortgage after the partner families complete 500 hours of “sweat equity.” With 485 hours of work in the books, Frost said, “We’ve got 15 hours to go.”
The Frosts and their three children — Charles Deacon 2; Serenity, 8; and Katelynn, 17 — are living in a 700-square-foot home and are paying more than half their income in rent.
It is the 31st house the nonprofit group has built in Clark County. And, it is the second house Habitat for Humanity has built in collaboration with students and teachers in the Evergreen district.
The first house in the partnership was moved onto its foundation about 13 months ago, on Sept. 9, 2013.
This school year, the class is so popular that production will double, said Heather Cochrun, spokeswoman for Evergreen Habitat for Humanity. Students at each high school will build an entire house — not just half.
