5 minute read
Kids Love to Work
An Interview with Judy Kashman
What brought you to VCS?
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I was working at Walden Lincoln, and Walden Lincoln was closing. And the Art teacher there told me about two positions that were opening: a Woodshop position [at VCS] and a Woodshop position at Little Red. And I interviewed here for the Woodshop, and the minute I walked in the door of that two-car garage I fell in love with the Woodshop and thought, ‘I have to work here, this is an amazing place, I have to have this job.’ And that was 30 years ago.
Did that two-car garage serve the goals of the Woodshop program well?
In 2006, that shop had gotten pretty dilapidated—it was really starting to fall apart, and I called Eve up and I said ‘Eve, you should come on down here’—it was raining pretty hard—‘and bring an umbrella—because water is leaking into the shop.’ And we renovated the shop and basically kept the same footprint.
And when Eve and I sat down to discuss this Woodshop, what was in the forefront of my mind was that we should design this new Woodshop so that it had multi-use tables… not just tables for the youngest of our population but have tables that could be for 6th, 7th, and 8th Graders. And we now have that. We have a wonderful space and we are creating an environment where both younger kids and older kids can work in the shop; if we pivot to having Woodshop classes for older kids, it’s ready to go. It’s ready for anybody to work in the shop.
Has the curriculum stayed the same—the projects for each age group?
The curriculum has been fine-tuned over the years. I’m more clear these days—probably in the last 15 years of the 30 (laughs)—it probably took me 15 years to really get what everybody loves to do. I think I have a pretty good idea now what kids love to do and what’s appropriate and what they’re capable of. I’m able to set high expectations, knowing that kids are capable of a lot: they’re hardworking, they come in ready to go, they don’t want to have long demonstrations, they want to get to work.
But this program is really meant to be a mix of some required work at the beginning of the year and a choice project in the second part of the year. Because by that point kids should have the skills they need to design something—you might want to make a birdhouse, I might want to make a table, this person over here might just want to make a small sculpture, and there should always be a part of the program where kids can make a choice about what they’d like to make based on their own personal life and needs.
What are some favorite Woodshop projects?
I like making musical instruments with kids, and that can be anything from bottle cap shakers to a spinoff of a four-string instrument or ukulele. We’ve made xylophones, usually with 1st Graders.
And puppets—kids will come who have older brothers and sisters and say ‘Oh, you know, my brother or my sister made that puppet’—so the puppet is kind of a tradition of this program.
We’ve done a lot of interdisciplinary work with Social Studies classes over the years—one year I think 2nd Grade was studying the Dutch, they made a Dutch house in their room. One year 5th Grade was studying Japan, the kids and I and my assistant planned a Japanese tea house with a sliding door, we built that in a 5th Grade room. Wigwams, covered wagons, Henry Hudson’s boat…
Most of the work we do comes from kids’ ideas. I think it’s important to honor students’ voices and you learn a lot from really listening to what they want to do. You know—they like making birdhouses, they like making chairs, they like making benches, they like making utilitarian objects, they like making useful things. They like making boxes, they like making toys. So all the things we make are based on things I know are sure hits.
What’s your favorite thing about teaching Woodshop?
Seeing the most joyful response in all ages of children when they realize they have the ability to build things out of wood.
One of my favorite things is watching the Kindergarteners when they learn how to nail for the first time, that’s pretty amazing to watch kids that young set up their own workspace —they all learn how to set up their own workspace, get the tools that they need from the tool wall and be independent.
Kids really love to work. Kids love to work. They just have an enormous amount of energy, they can’t wait to get in here, it’s hard to stop them. It truly is meeting their needs as a whole person—they just want to handle tools and materials and make something that is meaningful to them.
Woodshop is the original STEAM. You have all of these things combined—you have math, engineering, technology—in different kinds of ways—science, art. Like three times this week someone has said to me, ‘my sander’s hot’ or ‘my wood is hot.’ So they are making these discoveries…if you’re building something and something is tipping over, that’s engineering. And there’s always measuring, which we probably do more measuring in this Woodshop than most of the students do all year in their classrooms. And you can see it’s hard for kids to measure precisely.
The Woodshop is—I’m sure it always has been—a big draw. I can’t tell you how many people over the years have said to me ‘when we saw the Woodshop, we decided we wanted to send our child to VCS.’ So many people just walk into the shop and go, ‘Oh! This smells like wood!’ It’s a magical, intoxicating smell for anyone that walks in; they’re mesmerized by the smell of wood.
