GREEN BAY — Last fall, 331 S. Irwin Ave. in Green Bay was a nothing more than a vacant lot with some trees.
Now, there is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home, largely built by high-schoolers.
The home was built as part of the Green Bay School District’s Bridges Construction and Renovation program and its partnership with NeighborWorks Green Bay.
Bridges is a work-based learning experience where students get down and dirty learning how to build a home while getting both high school and college credit at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College.
Professional crews are brought in to do the more complex parts of construction like plumbing, pouring concrete and wiring the house for electricity.
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Otherwise, students spend three hours a day working on all aspects of the build. They try their hands at drywalling, framing, siding, laying stairs and installing doors and windows.
“I love seeing students figure out how to do something for themselves,” said Brain Frerk, the program’s instructor. “Even if they leave my class and never go into construction, they’ll always have these skills that they’ll be able to use for the rest of their lives.”
An open house was hosted on Aug. 25 when Bridges students took the Press-Gazette on a tour, showing off the $219,900 home and their newly minted knowledge of construction.
Eighteen-year-old Connor Vandelaarschot of West High School plans to pursue a career in construction. After doing the Bridges program, he said he’s fully prepared.
“I feel like this program got me 100% ready because you do a little bit of everything, so I feel like we’re ready for anything, any task that gets thrown at us,” he said of himself and his classmates.
For Ashton Xiong, also a West High student, he decided to do the program to get home improvement experience for when he flips houses in the future.
“One thing I was really interested in is real estate,” he said. “I want to buy and own, and I want to make repairs to these houses and I don’t want to have to pay these big bucks for people to come in and do it. I thought by doing this I could get that experience.”
The work involved a lot of trial and error, Vandelaarschot said.
“We were brand new at it,” Vandelaarschot said. “I feel like that’s the best way to learn, to just make mistakes and then just learn from your mistakes.”
Sometimes that meant redoing doors, walls and relaying the stairs to make sure they were just right.
As the boys walked through the home, their first time seeing the finished product, they pointed at walls and doors they built — looking back on the work they did.
“You make memories and you keep those memories,” said Thomas Debeck, who also went to West High. “When you’re older, you’ll drive past this house and show your grandkids. You can say that you built a home, not many people can say they built a home.”
Aside from the technical skills of carpentry, the students also built career skills that will help them to be successful employees.
“I teach them three things that are going to get them ahead: Being there every day on time, being respectful and polite, and giving your employer a full day’s work for a full day’s pay,” Frerk said. “If you do that, you’ll be extremely successful in whatever you choose to do in life.”
Ten students participated in this year’s program — half in the new build section and the other in the renovation section.
The renovation section offers a different set of skills and experiences that requires more creative solutions to problems, Frerk said.
Students renovated an over 100-year-old home on Van Buren Street, fixing water damage, widening the staircase and opening up rooms.
“We had a lot of challenges that require a lot more thinking than just following a blueprint and building a new house,” he said. “There had to be more creative solutions in order to bring that old house up to modern code.”
Frerk’s goal when he started as the instructor five years ago was to grow the program. Participation for next year is expected to more than double with 24 students taking part.
“Our partners in industry are really excited about us expanding the program because they’re in desperate need of employees,” he said. “…They’ll have kids that then they can train quickly and get them up to speed and get them on a jobsite.”
And one day, these kids might have construction businesses of their own. That’s the hope of NeighborWorks Green Bay’s CEO and President Noel Halverson.
“We want to see pickup trucks with some of these kids’ names on them in the future,” he said.
One of the Xiong’s favorite memories was their companion Jack: a large, orange bunny that would sit outside while they worked.
“He would just hang out … and watch us the whole time,” Xiong said. “We have no idea where he came from.”
Vandelaarschot, Xiong and Debeck resoundingly said they would recommend other students take part in the program and not just for the skills they learned.
“Being with these guys, you hold stuff like that for a long time and you build a connection,” Debeck said. “Actually all throughout high school, I was a quiet kid. I opened up. You guys helped me a lot,” he said to Vandelaarschot and Xiong.
For more information about the home, visit https://nwgreenbay.org/real-estate/homes-for-sale/.
Danielle DuClos covers K-12 education in the Green Bay area as a Report for America corps member. She is based at the Press-Gazette in Green Bay. To contact her, email [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @danielle_duclos.
