Woodworking Club’s Success

Woodworking Club is a club for anyone at Post Oak High School who wants to give back to their community and create a lasting impact through fun and collaborative woodworking projects.

August of 2022 was the start of my junior year at The Post Oak School. I had always loved woodworking ever since my grandfather taught me the basics of carpentry. Throughout my underclassmen years, the school helped me explore my passion for woodworking through projects that I probably never would have gotten to experience otherwise under the school’s Design Technology program, which is designed to teach students how to think like engineers by creating their very own projects. This class taught me a lot of what I know about woodworking today, and once I learned that my upperclassmen years wouldn’t have those same experiences available to me, I set out to make my own woodworking program to help teach other upperclassmen the same skills that I had learned and to continue to explore my own passions.

The school has always been good at helping students to pursue their ideas and passions, and I found my opportunity in the form of a student club. At the start of my junior year, I proposed the idea of a Woodworking Club alongside my classmate and friend Mateo, another student who was passionate about woodworking, along with support from the math and Design Tech teacher, Mr. Grisbee. The club got a lot of support right off the bat, and from then on it was history! The school gave us a budget to start our work and the club’s members immediately started brainstorming ideas for our project. Eventually, we came up with the idea to build wooden outdoor tables to replace the plastic tables the school supplied on Brown Foundation Terrace to accommodate lunchtime seating during Covid-19. We started by 3D modeling our ideas in Fusion 360 to get an idea of what we wanted to make and to create a plan for how we would carry out our project.

Once we had a plan, we took a field trip to purchase the wood we would need and got right to building our ideas in real life. We met every Thursday during Community Work Time, as well as Tuesdays after school and we got permission to use the school’s maker space, La Tinkería. Our plan came to life before our eyes over the course of about six months. On the Friday before spring break, we had one last extra-long work day to complete the project and it was done! The best moment for me was moving our project to the East patio and slowly watching people realize that new tables had appeared. It was exciting watching them come out to sit on the benches and test out our work. Getting to practice my skills and learn with friends as a part of my school was honestly a great experience for me, and I feel like we all learned a lot. What can I say? I’m excited for what we’re going to do next!

Thank you to Oliver, Isaak, Ethan, Ira, Micah, and Mateo for working tirelessly at each meeting, and thank you to Mr. Grisbee for supporting us and being the glue that holds the club together. I couldn’t have asked for a better group.