Yellowknife (May 29/06) - Chief Julius school shop students are getting into the house-building business following a popular program spreading throughout the South Slave region.

The idea is to build a small 700-square-foot one-bedroom house within the school year.

In the process, students learn trades skills, work responsibility skills, and help the community's housing situation.

"It'll give them an opportunity to get a taste of what carpentry is like, what a plumber does, what electricians do," said principal Bruce Spencer.

The program is co-ordinated through the NWT Housing Corp., which pays for the materials, determines where the houses go on completion, and pays to move them there.

Spencer's school is in the planning stage to get the program going, but it has been a fixture of Hay River's Diamond Jenness secondary school's shop program for more than five years.

That school is finishing its fourth house, which was where you would find Spencer in February as he checked out how it was done.

As well as Diamond Jenness, schools in Fort Smith (now on its second house), Fort Providence (its second) and Fort Resolution (its first) are hammering away.

"It'll be brand-new for this area of the Northwest Territories," Spencer said enthusiastically of the scheme spreading north.

The work is done up to building codes, with trades teachers and trades pros guiding the work.

"Typically we would do one a year," Spencer explained. "Starting in the fall, we'll try to get the framing up and all covered before the snow comes, and then work on the inside for the remainder of the year."

By having a relatively long-term project like this, students can more thoroughly build skills in certain trades that they can use to enter post-secondary programs.

"It bridges our schools with colleges that can look at what they've done and accept them into trades programs," the principal said.

In the short-term, it has meant keeping kids in school.

"The first group of kids we had were ones we wanted to save" from being fast drop-outs, said Diamond Jenness school instructor Tim Borchuk.

It worked, even if just for the length of the project.

"They see that there's something for them. It succeeded in keeping them in school, but when they went to the next semester their attendance dropped off and they had difficulty completing their courses," Borchuk said.

But something must have stuck.

"At a close guess I'd say 90 per cent (of students who took the house course) are working in a trade somewhere," Borchuk said.

The physical presence of the house on the school parking lot attracts a lot of attention from students, but there are so many more lessons than how to swing a hammer or weld copper pipe.

"A lot of it is teaching them how to work: to show up for work, to listen to instructions and how to follow through, and how to work as a team," Borchuk said.

"That's a huge thing. It's more than just a house, it's something tangible and they can relate it to any place they go."

The 10 students earn five work experience credits and five current technology studies credits.

"They work every afternoon, all afternoon," he said.

Borchuk, a carpenter by trade, has been guiding the course with instructor John Ashcroft, a welder.

But professional trades in Hay River have been keen on the project, too. Companies like B&T Plumbing and Heating and Mackenzie Electric Ltd. have volunteered their time to help students learn the finer points of those trades.

"The trades guys in Hay River have been unbelievable contributors to this program," said Tom Makepeace, a district director for the NWT Housing Corp.

"These companies send a trades individual, who they pay to be there, so there's no charge to the Corporation and no charge to the school," he said.

They have a vested interest to do so. The more that young adults develop a liking for work in skilled trades, the larger the available workforce for companies needing entry-level help.

"They need these kids and are picking students up out of the program later," Makepeace said.

The Hay River houses have been trucked where they are needed.

In Fort McPherson, principal Spencer said the houses his students build will go to seniors housing in the hamlet.