Greensboro Reporter

It’s not a big house, to be sure. In fact, it’s a "tiny house" -- but students at Grimsley High School are learning that big or small, building a house requires a lot more knowledge and effort than one might think.

“Learning how to build a house,” Machaias Frazier, a senior at the school, told Fox 8 News. “I had no experience about it whatsoever.” 

Grimsley High School set out to give the carpentry students some hands-on experience. The payoff is that they’re preparing the teens for careers that go beyond the classroom.

"Most of these kids today are like that,” carpentry teacher Tim Hensley told Fox 8 News. “They don’t like sitting in the classroom all the time. When they get to come out and put their hands on things and work with it and have a finished product at the end of it, it’s really amazing to them.”

With classes back to in-person learning after the COVID-19 shutdowns, this recent project of building a "tiny house" is giving students a chance to see the project through from start to finish. Construction started in October, and now they are nearing completion of the house.

“They learn all aspects of the building trade, all aspects of the electrical trade,” Hensley told Fox 8 News. “They learn where they can apply this in real life. They learn how to place the studs, how to calculate loads, how to figure concrete and how to figure your circuit amp capacity. Everything about what a general contractor does on the site.”

Upon completion, the house will be donated to the Tiny House Community Development, where it will serve a second important purpose.

“These will be taking homeless people off the streets, homeless veterans off the streets and giving them opportunities to adapt back into society where they can be productive citizens,” Hensley told Fox 8 News.

The school is hoping that by offering real-world challenges, the students will be prepared to fill vacancies in the trade industry.

“These trades right here are very, very important nowadays. There’s about a 10-to-1 ratio now of people getting out of the trade for everyone going into it,” Hensley said, according to Fox 8 News. “And they’re at a rate right now that they need bodies to fill. And most of these companies will start kids out close to $40,000 right out the door of high school.”

Two other Greensboro schools, Weaver Academy and Southern Guilford High School, also have tiny house building programs.