"It's a class where you can take it seriously and it can be a career for you, or it can be a hobby," said Blake Robbins, wood shop teacher, "Something to express your artistic side."

At Sultana High School some may think that wood shop is just a class for slackers. Before I visited the 4th period wood shop, I had the same thought, but these students where making rocking chairs, poker tables, and other complex projects. Wood shop wasn't just a class of students passing the time, wood shop is a class full of hard working students applying academic skills from other classes. It's a class where most students spend their time working with intricate details to express their artistic side.

The rocking chairs alone require the builder to work with a long list of specific details.

"You're talking about a three ring binder of, I want to say at least a couple hundred pages of instructions," said Vice Principal Scott Ahlgren as he described the instructions for building a rocking chair. It took Mr. Ahlgren eight months to build a rocking chair. He wanted to build a rocking chair for his wife and new born baby. He hopes that when his daughter is old enough, he can pass it on to her. "It's almost like it's a living breathing thing," said Ahlgren. "If your going to put that much time in it, eight months and probably in the excess of 120 hours."

There are a handful of students that are building rocking chairs that are very complicated projects. When the chair is complete, some of them may be worth from $3,000 to $6,000. It's not that they're probably goning to sell them. Many are likely to become family heirlooms to be passed done for generations.

Despite stereotypes, woodshed is a serious class where academics and art become one to create tangible evidence of skill and learning. All the hard work does pay off.

"It's an intense process, but a very fulfilling one."

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