COBDEN (WSIL) -- It's easy to imagine a high school art student bringing home a water color, or even ceramic art, but what about a musical instrument?
Cobden High School created a new STEM program to do just that, but in a twist, they call it, “STEAM.�
"It's STEM guitar building. I like to refer to it as ‘STEAM� guitar building because I'm an art teacher, and to me, there's nothing more artistic than building a guitar,� said Cobden Art instructor Jeremy Crawford, noting the addition of "A" to the traditional STEM acronym.
Nine high school seniors are enrolled in his Science-Technology-Engineering- ART-and Math class.
"Aside from the art aspect, it's definitely science, technology, engineering and math,� said Crawford. “I had to go back and learn some math to actually teach this too; so, they're learning all those skills, they're learning hands-on skills they might not get otherwise."
This is the second year for the program in Cobden. It's part of the National Science Foundation, which supplies the guitar kits to the school through grant funding.
"So the body comes pre-cut. And that's really important because all the pickups and everything needs to be in a particular spot and very precise,� said Crawford. “The headstock has not been shaped at all, so that's entirely up to them. The body, although it's been cut out, it's not formed to their body yet, so they do a lot of body contouring, shaping, and manipulating of the wood before it's ready to go for paint and primer."
The students choose their shapes and colors and then let the construction process begin.
"I really like purple, and I thought it probably would make a really cool after effect with the black with it."
"I thought it was going to be really hard and, like, time consuming, but it's actually really easy."
Crawford says that's because the hands-on learning gives the students a sense of accomplishment, and the time in the classroom just flies by.
"This is definitely one of those classes when I call clean-up, they don't want to, and not because they don't want to clean -- they don't want to go back to their other classes, and that's really nice for me.
