After Nathan Criswell swung the front door open, the kids scattered; through the open-concept living room, around the drywalled corners and into the empty bedrooms of the emerging home. They climbed into a loft and back down to the garage.
“What is that?” one of the fourth graders shouted, pointing toward a blocked off opening. “Can the animals get in there?”
Every house has to have a strong foundation, Criswell explained, but some homes are built on ground that’s not level. When that happens, he told the half dozen students circled around him, builders sometimes use a crawlspace.
“That’s just a way to give a house a strong foundation when the ground is low,” said Criswell, a department chair in Warren Township’s Walker Career Center.
It’s that same concept of foundational support that leaders of the school district’s Pleasant Run Elementary Construction Club say they hope to instill in their students. The fourth graders meet once a week after school to participate in the program supported by Indiana Construction Roundtable Foundation which seeks to work with local schools to create a pipeline of skilled workers ready to enter the state’s growing construction industry.
The construction club took a group field trip last month to the Walker Career Center to learn about the high school construction trades program and a house students in the programs have been working on during class. It sits at the end of a street of homes built by Warren Township’s trades program over the years.
Fourth grade students check out the view below. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy 
Too small to construct themselves, the observe all of the hard work. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy 
Nathan Criswell (right), chair of the engineering and technology education department at the Walker Career Center, talks with a group of students. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy 
Criswell leads a group of students to a home that is under construction. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy 
The students wear required safety attire at a house that is part of Warren Central’s construction trades program. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy
“It’s a good thing to expose them to lots of different things,” club sponsor Yvette Glenn said. “We’re exposing kids to things they would probably never use at this age.”
The Pleasant Run students — a little too young to build a house for humans — have been practicing with their own projects instead, making birdhouses along with concrete magnets and other age-appropriate activities.
Glenn, who is also the elementary school’s family engagement liaison and PTA president, said she still has a card in her office from a student in the club last year.
“Thank you, Ms. Glenn,” the card reads. “I’ll never forget where I used my first screwdriver.”
In a development close to the school, students explore nooks and crannies inside one of the homes. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy 
A group of students learn about the home-building process from Criswell. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy 
A building permit indicates that the owner of this construction site is the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy Macauley Wieland-Horning (left), program manager of K-12 initiatives at Indiana Construction Roundtable Foundation, points out construction details. Credit: Doug McSchooler for Mirror Indy
Her students are young and still deciding what they want to do, Glenn said. She knows not all of them will grow up to build houses, but she says she hopes the program allows the kids to learn more about what kind of jobs exist in construction or a related industry.
“For most kids this age, your jobs are nurse, firefighter, policeman, things like that,” Glenn said. “You don’t think about the construction manager. You don’t think about the electrician. … It just kind of opens their mind and gives them a broader scope of what’s out there.”
Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.
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