EHS students learn the basics of construction and masonry

Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing series covering the various career and technical courses offered at Enterprise High School.

Enterprise High School’s Career Tech program affords students the opportunity to jump head first into the construction industry with its masonry and building and construction programs.

Lifelong Enterprise native Buddy Skinner teaches building and construction along with construction electricity and plumbing. Skinner is a 45-year experienced master electrician and master plumber, as well as being a state licensed homebuilder. Skinner helped develop the building and construction program at EHS because of a need in the field for young people.

“I want to show these young students a path to a career,” Skinner said. “Not everyone is made for college.

“Several years back there really wasn’t enough college graduates and there was a big push to send everyone to college. While this was going on I think we kind of backed off the career and vocational or blue collar jobs. A lot of the old timers that were blue collar workers weren’t trained in the new technology but the young people weren’t trained either because they were taking other courses. The technology advanced but there were no young people advancing with the technology to take over for the old timers when they retired.”

Skinner says that he takes students through the basics of building and construction from the layout of a house, first aid, building codes, framing, finish trim, electricity and plumbing.

Skinner said that even if his students choose not to going into construction he encourages them to take everything from every course they can at EHS.

“There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t remind them how lucky they are to be walking the halls of EHS,” Skinner said. “I try to encourage them to pull everything they can from every teacher they can whether it be a career tech teacher or human anatomy or history or anything else they take.

“You are going to be in the real world pretty quick and you won’t have the chance to study all of this anymore.”

Mickey German teaches masonry after a 44-year career as a contractor and owning a masonry company. The Enterprise native said his class started with just one block per semester with 14 students and grew to 65 students and two blocks the next semester to three full blocks each semester and more than 160 students that signed up this school year.

German said that he got out of the masonry business because there simply wasn’t enough people working, which is what he stresses to his students.

“I try and get them to realize just how valuable this program is and how much of a blessing it is for the kids to have it,” German said. “To have this offered is just tremendous.”

German said that his program doesn’t just teach masonry but also teaches about tiling, brick work, stone work, cement work and block work. While both building and construction and masonry offers students the opportunity to get NCCER certified, German said that he wants to make students realize that learning the basics in these programs can help them not just in masonry or construction but in a number of jobs.

“I have one student that wants to be an architect,” German said. “I’ve worked with a lot of architects that had no field experience. Anything works on paper but you need to have that experience to know why something is built a certain way.”

German said these career tech programs can also lead to students becoming safety inspectors, working in sales for construction companies or even running their own handyman services along with obviously working in masonry and construction.

“The ones that stay in here two or three semesters really have a shot at getting a good job,” German said. “The school sees the need and the community sees the need, which is why we have these programs.

“We have two boys coming out of school right now that are going into trade school and one that’s going to start working for a concrete company out of Dothan. We have another student that is already laying brick making $18 an hour as a first-year mason.”

German said that masons make an average of $25 per hour and that if he can just get a small portion of each class into the workforce in construction he will be pleased.

“Each semester we have between 55-60 students on average and if I can get a small percentage of those to join the workforce I feel like we’re a winner,” German said.