business backgrounder | education & workforce
Students at Kalama High School study and practice marketing and manufacturing during a class with Cory Torppa, the construction / engineering / manufacturing teacher and CTE director.
where she used a sophisticated laser engraver alongside other students in a new classroom designed with modern high-tech manufacturing in mind.
She and other students had already set up designs into their machines to make customized coasters, T-shirts, hat designs and other goodies. After the products were finished, she headed down the hill to work a shift at a new gift store that sells their wares. The Chinook Shoppe is a popular store her school runs in a spacious building that caters to the tourists who stop at the waterfront town while taking a riverboat cruise on the Columbia.
It all creates a quick product development-feedback-redesign cycle that Hutchinson loves. She and other Kalama students have tweaked existing products and designed new ones based on the response they get from the customers they meet every day. If this sounds like a unique and invigorating high school experience, it is.“ It gives you a real idea of the real world,” said Hutchinson, who wants to supervise a carpentry business someday.“ It shows you what the actual process is to have your own business. And it’ s really not that hard. You just have to look at it with a different perspective.”
Nearby, Kevin Lardizabel-Orea, a senior engineering student, was programming a UV printer to lay down a coat of red on a metal cutout of Bigfoot.“ How many classes is there a laser you can use?” he said with a laugh. With the class period nearly over, he waited eagerly to pull his creation out as soon as the machine finished his program. Examining his creation with the penetrating gaze of a craftsman, he identified what worked and what didn’ t, and thought about how he would change his approach the next day.
“ The goal is to get them engaged in learning... go from sketch to product. It could be as simple as a sticker, then it’ s a T-shirt, then it’ s a laser ornament. Then we talk about business and marketing— what’ s going to make this ornament better?”
— Cory Torppa, the CTE director and construction / engineering / manufacturing teacher at Kalama High School
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