Inspired by his fellow prizewinning skilled trades teachers at Harbor Freight Tools for Schools’ Let’s Build It convening last summer, Blair Jensen came up with an idea to combat bullying at the elementary schools in his local community of Riverton, Utah. Blair received a small community impact grant to bring the idea to life and his talented welding students haven’t looked back.
The students designed and fabricated 12 “Buddy Benches” for their school district’s elementary school playgrounds to help kids make new friends. Now brought to fruition, we reached out to Jensen for his reflections on how the project went and what made it so successful in his community:
“We were able to build 12 benches from grant funds and some additional funding from our local education foundation, including a few new tools and paying a company to powder coat the benches. The biggest thing that has helped to make this project successful is networking, starting with my fellow prizewinners at Let’s Build It last summer. They helped me flesh out the project during our session focused on community impact grants.
My fellow teachers that joined me on the project brought great perspectives that have made the project easier and the assemblies we’ve done more impactful. As industry partners have come to meet with my students, they’ve been impressed with the project and offered students a few pointers to improve production. One even donated a spacing tool that he makes and sells to help us layout the bench slats.
The community has loved it! At every school, the teachers have raved about how well the students presented themselves, and how beautiful and well made the benches are. The elementary students have been packed around our high school students as they install the benches. You can barely see the benches once we step away, there are so many kids excited and ready to try it out. Our superintendent and other administrators loved the project and stopped by a few times to check in on our progress.
On May 14, several of our legislators, most of the local news stations, and one newspaper attended the assembly and were blown away by the project. Most of the principals have asked if they could get an additional bench. I’ve also got an idea for another project for our elementary schools once we have benches at every school and maybe some of the city parks, too!”
