Project Hope
As an extension of the Fox High School Special Needs service learning focus, our industrial Arts classes have combined curriculum, skills, civic responsibility, and compassion to reach our special needs community. Our industrial arts classes have gone beyond the typical construction of shelves, homemade clocks and bookends to provide our students with an opportunity to plan, build, and assemble a complete deck and wheelchair ramp for a member of our community who became bound to a wheelchair and did not have wheelchair access to her home. Industrial Arts teacher Jason Rodaway learned of a situation through “Hammers of Hope” and quickly presented an idea to his class. The students immediately responded with “When can we start!” From there, a service learning project evolved and culminated with the delivery and set up of a brand new deck and wheelchair ramp to a home in our community. When the students constructed the deck and ramp for the final time in the front yard of the new owner, instead of “visualizing” the impact they would have, they were able to experience it first hand, giving them a humbling memory to last a lifetime.