Hands-on Heroes

Ask a kid what they want to do when they grow up and you’ll get a hundred answers. Chances are good that “woodworker” isn’t one of them. Not surprising, what with educational attention moving away from vocations, to technology and other careers.

I fell in love with woodworking in high school woodshop, but few schools offer that today. Or metal shop, electric shop or any other vocational course, for that matter. How, then, to give them a positive image of it?

Dura Supreme Cabinetry, a Minnesota manufacturer employing 500 people, has been doing exactly that for three decades. The company’s “Kids Switch Day” invites employees’ fifth-grade children or grandkids to a day devoted to them.

The program presents information about the industry with kid-friendly activities, followed by a tour of the facility. The tour group visits each child’s parent or grandparent where they work, while the parent demonstrates and shows them all what they do.

The highlight of the day is fully supervised hands-on experience building their own cabinets. They’re given face frames, doors, hardware and other cabinet components, along with tools and safety gear, and then helped to actually build one. Every kid leaves with a happy experience, and the pride of having made something substantial.

Now, I’m not naive enough to believe that every one of these kids will become professional cabinetmakers or furniture makers, or even just a few. But by being exposed at an early age to what manufacturing entails and how their lives have been impacted by woodworking – through their parents’ or grandparents’ careers – they’ll have a deeper understanding of their own career options when the time comes.

It’s always possible that having seen the process in action, including hands-on time building their own cabinets, they may catch the bug early. Who knows, in a decade or two you might see their shops and their work profiled right here.