Pinning for perfection

This past August, I went back to teaching high school social studies.

I had taken three years off to stay home with our girl, Gracie, but now she is in a preschool program full-time, so I decided to head back to the classroom. I was lucky enough to be offered a wonderful position at Airline High School teaching civics and whatever other class they ask me to, and it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made in a while. It’s an amazing place to work with supportive and fun co-workers and great students.

One of the requirements for a Bossier Parish high school senior is to take English IV, better known as the dreaded “Senior Project” class. Students are to choose an activity that is new to them, learn more about it through creating something or performing a new skill, and have to write a research paper close to the subject. The thing that freaks all the students out is they actually have to present their project to a panel of judges twice – once to a panel of teachers that critiques them and gives suggestions to help them with their final presentations, which is to a panel of adults in our community. They also have to find a mentor that is knowledgeable about their subject to help them on their journey. Some students learned how to bow hunt, some helped plan weddings, and some learned how to scuba dive; there were a ton of different subjects covered.

Which brings me to Angela. Angela Luang is a senior at Airline, and was a student in one of my friend’s classes. She was looking for a mentor to help her with her project. She wanted to build a picnic table that transitioned into a regular bench and needed a carpenter or woodworker’s help. She found the idea on Pinterest, which is how I found out that even high-schoolers are addicted to Pinterest, too. As soon as I heard she was looking for a carpentry mentor, I asked my husband, Eric, if he was interested. He is an amazing carpenter as well as a great teacher. He agreed, and our journey with Angie began.

Eric has a shop off the back of our house, and so Angela’s parents agreed to allow her to visit us a couple of days a week to work on her bench. The first time she came over, we all sat down and got to know each other better on our porch, and Eric and Angela decided on a plan and ordered a pattern from the Internet. They made a portable tool box as their first unofficial project, and Eric bought her some basic tools. When the real work started, Angela took to it as though she knew what she was doing; she impressed us so much with how hard she worked and how easy the skills came to her. The two of them steadily made progress on the bench, and over the semester, Angie became a part of our extended family. Eric wanted to be a teacher for a long time but graduated from college without completing his student teaching, and I think mentoring Angie really showed him how much he enjoyed teaching new skills. I also know he enjoyed teaching her about Led Zeppelin and Nirvana and how to be a better domino player, all of which are knowledge he feels to be critical for the growth of any young person (and I agree!). When Angela would head home, he would always tell me he had better hopes for her generation.

Through all of this, the two of them built a pretty cool bench together (it came to be known as the “Wooden Transformer.”), and I know Angie is proud of what she has done – with good reason. The bench had to be brought up to the school for the judges to look at, and they were impressed with what she made. She practiced her speech in my class a couple of times before her big day and ended up with an A in the class.

Since they finished their project, Angela brought a young man over to meet us before Christmas and came bearing presents for me, Eric and Gracie. She is in the class next door to me this semester so I get to see her every day, and we will definitely attend her graduation in May. What started out as a Pinterest project for a high school class turned into something that brought a wonderful young person into our world. Of all the projects that have come from Pinterest, this one definitely has been the one that not only built a bench but expanded our world by one.

Mandy Byrd is a teacher at Airline High School and a business owner originally from Colorado.

She is mother to Gracie and wife to her handsome devil-of-a-man, Eric.

Send Pinterest ideas and comments to Mandy at mandybyrd@icloud.com.