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Wednesday, October 22, 2025
How an award-winning high school woodworking program preps students for careers
Woodworking Network: At Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough, North Carolina, the woodshop is a serious career and technical education (CTE) program where students have the opportunity to become industry-ready woodworkers.
4 comments:
Sid james
said...
I wish I had had something like this in high school. I think career and technical education is so important, and I did not have any access to career and technical credits. I went to an all-girl’s school, which I think can be really great for evening the playing field for girls in academics, but I think girl’s schools have yet to catch up in terms of hands-on and technical education. Having a high-quality, highly resourced, hands-on program like this would’ve provided me so many more concrete hard skills that I always wanted to learn. The trades are such an underrecognized avenue for high school graduates, and I’m glad that my generation seems to be turning more towards the trades as college education becomes harder and harder to afford. I think programs like this in high schools are so valuable for showing students different paths for different learning styles and goals.
I think CTE and physical skill/trade oriented classes are such an important thing to offer in high schools. I actually went to the high school where one of my grandparent’s sisters went to and when I talked to her she told me all about the woodshop and auto shop classes they had. However when I attended, my school had discontinued all of those classes. When I first went into high school I was really drawn towards more hand-on skills and was disappointed when I learned they did not offer any of those classes. I actually got really lucky because the lack of woodshop actually pushed me to take our school’s theater production class because I was told it was the closest I could get and well… I’m now here, so one can say that worked out. Something else my high school had (and although I didn’t get a chance to participate in it, a lot of my friends did) is they actually had a CTE pathway for entertainment and media. I am really lucky because I am getting to go to college for something I am passionate about but college is not the best choice for everyone and I hope more people will be able to get these resources.
This program sound so cool! In high school I always wanted to take classes that were more hands on, and less about traditional academics. The school I went to for many years, much like the vast majority of US high schools, had a pretty set curriculum that allowed for maybe one art, music, performance, or other elective class. For students who excel at things that are typically considered "extra curricular" rather than the things we focus on during the school day this set up kinda sucks. I know that I would have loved to take a technical class like this, and I ended up leaving the more traditional school I went to in favor of an online school so that I could have more freedom to explore the things I was actually interested in. Programs like this can give students a huge leg up when starting their careers, and provides people a more direct path to technical careers, rather than feeling like they aren't good at school.
I definitely think that career and technical education classes are a really vital piece of a solid curriculum. In addition to an arts requirement, I had a CTE credit when I was in high school, which I completed by taking stage tech (shocking), and other course options included stuff like child development or cooking. Definitely, the one thing that I really wished I had exposure to was the classic high school shop class, and a program like the one outlined in the article sounds really awesome. I’ve never actually really taken a true woodworking class, so I’m definitely pretty jealous of these high schoolers. My favorite part about this article was how passionate the teacher was about his curriculum. I think it’s really impressive how well-established the progression of skills through this series of woodworking classes it, and the achievable certification goals seems like a really good way to encourage students.
4 comments:
I wish I had had something like this in high school. I think career and technical education is so important, and I did not have any access to career and technical credits. I went to an all-girl’s school, which I think can be really great for evening the playing field for girls in academics, but I think girl’s schools have yet to catch up in terms of hands-on and technical education. Having a high-quality, highly resourced, hands-on program like this would’ve provided me so many more concrete hard skills that I always wanted to learn. The trades are such an underrecognized avenue for high school graduates, and I’m glad that my generation seems to be turning more towards the trades as college education becomes harder and harder to afford. I think programs like this in high schools are so valuable for showing students different paths for different learning styles and goals.
I think CTE and physical skill/trade oriented classes are such an important thing to offer in high schools. I actually went to the high school where one of my grandparent’s sisters went to and when I talked to her she told me all about the woodshop and auto shop classes they had. However when I attended, my school had discontinued all of those classes. When I first went into high school I was really drawn towards more hand-on skills and was disappointed when I learned they did not offer any of those classes. I actually got really lucky because the lack of woodshop actually pushed me to take our school’s theater production class because I was told it was the closest I could get and well… I’m now here, so one can say that worked out. Something else my high school had (and although I didn’t get a chance to participate in it, a lot of my friends did) is they actually had a CTE pathway for entertainment and media. I am really lucky because I am getting to go to college for something I am passionate about but college is not the best choice for everyone and I hope more people will be able to get these resources.
This program sound so cool! In high school I always wanted to take classes that were more hands on, and less about traditional academics. The school I went to for many years, much like the vast majority of US high schools, had a pretty set curriculum that allowed for maybe one art, music, performance, or other elective class. For students who excel at things that are typically considered "extra curricular" rather than the things we focus on during the school day this set up kinda sucks. I know that I would have loved to take a technical class like this, and I ended up leaving the more traditional school I went to in favor of an online school so that I could have more freedom to explore the things I was actually interested in. Programs like this can give students a huge leg up when starting their careers, and provides people a more direct path to technical careers, rather than feeling like they aren't good at school.
I definitely think that career and technical education classes are a really vital piece of a solid curriculum. In addition to an arts requirement, I had a CTE credit when I was in high school, which I completed by taking stage tech (shocking), and other course options included stuff like child development or cooking. Definitely, the one thing that I really wished I had exposure to was the classic high school shop class, and a program like the one outlined in the article sounds really awesome. I’ve never actually really taken a true woodworking class, so I’m definitely pretty jealous of these high schoolers. My favorite part about this article was how passionate the teacher was about his curriculum. I think it’s really impressive how well-established the progression of skills through this series of woodworking classes it, and the achievable certification goals seems like a really good way to encourage students.
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