Wood Projects in the Classroom 2: Teacher DIY

Unskilled labour

My worst subjects in junior high school were Woodwork, Music, and Social Studies.  If you know me, this is deeply, deeply ironic when you think of me now.  To explain, because of getting involved with Japanese Canadian history, I am known for my work in Social Studies, but my early teen self was pretty clueless and apathetic about Social Studies.  Though my teen self (and my present self) thought about or played music during almost every waking second of my existence, the trumpet was not my friend back then, so didn't do well in Band.  And with Woodwork class, I was unskilled, I could not follow a plan, and I was so slow that my projects were late or incomplete.  But now, you can find me in the garage cobbling something together with wood.  

I joke about my well-deserved C grade in woodworking because I enjoy it so much now as an adult.  Honestly, my skills have not really advanced that much, now in my garage workshop.  My projects are still wobbly, the paint and finish on them are non-existent or sloppy, and I am still glacially slow.  So why do I still do it?  I think of myself as a tinkerer, a designer, a scientist, and a problem solver.  Woodworking (woodplaying?) lets me explore all those sides of me.  The risers, lapdesks, and the students' storage bins (from the previous post) are examples of my wood tinkering.  

What do you need?

A while back, I was visiting a school where they were investigating self-regulation, and in one class a young teacher, Sarah, made her own storage crates and a big rolling table made out of a tree stump.  I was really impressed because I think she made all of her stuff in her apartment!  If you wanted to build some items for your class, this goes to show that you don't need a lot of tools or room.  

You basically need two things: 

1. Something to cut your wood to the length you want.
2. Something to fasten it back together in the shape you want it.  

For cutting, Sarah had the place where she bought the wood cut the wood for her.  I'm not that organized so I cut as I go, plus I am usually using leftover pieces of wood.  I use a miter saw to cut long skinny boards into short boards and a table saw or a circular saw with a guide for breaking down wide materials like plywood or reused Ikea cabinets.  For my first home projects (shoe shelves), I used a hand saw.

For fastening, I use nails, glue, screws, or a combination of the three depending on what I need the finished product to do or how it is going to hold up.  Because of my poor skills, I am not great at keeping things square, so one product that has really helped me lately is a pocket hole jig.  With it, things are usually square and they make relatively strong joints.  (There are lots of useful Youtube videos to explain how to use pockethole jigs).

[As an aside, one tool I would recommend is a cordless drill.  My whole woodworking rebirth came from the cordless drill.  It was the first tool I bought when my wife and I bought our house.  It was love at first use. I hung pictures with it. I assembled furniture with it. I reinforced mouldings with it. I drilled pilot holes with it.  Heck, I would have brushed my teeth with it if I could fit my toothbrush in the chuck.  I thought it was just me, but other friends who bought first houses and first drills felt the same.  Bonnie said excitedly, "Did you know there is a magnetic thing so the pointing things don't fall off?!"  Dave said, "Sometimes I  find myself walking around with it in my hand, just looking for things to drill."  Had I known that drilling was going to be this satisfying, I would have become a dentist.  Cordless drills are the gateway tool.]

Easy but useful projects

Here are some things I made that solved a few classroom problems.  (For both projects I used a pocket hole jig to make things square and strong, but you don't have to.)  

1. Classroom library book bins

For our classroom library, we arrange every book by genre and place the books in different bins based on those genres.  Students or teams of students adopt a genre bin and become the librarian for that bin, making sure books are returned to the proper bins.  

Some bins have lots of heavy books that would destroy the usual ugly plastic bins.  I had some nice dark wood bins that I bought at a liquidation place, but I did not have enough bins for every genre, so I had to make some sturdy bins using the pocket hole jig and (what else?) an unused Ikea shelf.  

bins with genre card and the librarian's name

2. Accessible teacher storage

The built-in teacher storage in my room is behind the sliding whiteboards and then there are swinging lockable doors.  I have this little rolling cart where my laptop and mic are, but the cart is around the corner from the teacher cabinets.  That means every time I wanted to grab a teacher book during a lesson, I'd have to walk around the cart, slide the whiteboards to the side, open the swinging doors, get the book, close the swinging doors, slide the whiteboards back, go back around to where the mic, camera, and laptop are, and then try to remember why I needed the book in the first place.  I needed a little bit of on-the-fly teacher storage.

There was this little corner (and I mean little, like less than 50 cm) where I could fit a shelf.  Because it was so skinny, I would need to go tall to get enough space for everything I needed there: read alouds, math materials, spelling resources, a place for my lunch, etc.  I left a little gap so there was room for my guitar and a place to hand my jacket.  

Like any of these teacher projects, by making it myself, I was able to create custom things that fit my needs (and constraints) perfectly.