CDO students learn, put to use variety of construction skills

Saws buzz over the chatter of students.

Floors and clothing collect sawdust.

Jim Luckow's class is where students acquire carpentry, masonry, electrical and plumbing skills as part of Canyon del Oro's construction program.

Luckow, who also teaches architecture, is in his third year at Canyon del Oro, 25 W. Calle Concordia in Oro Valley. He came out of retirement - he had taught at the middle-school level for 30 years - to take over the school's program, which had mainly consisted of woodshop classes.

"The construction program is not a dying program in the school system," he said.

Later in the school year, Luckow and his students plan to convert a container box into housing.

The project will consist of transforming the box into a home by adding a full kitchen, living space and a bathroom, Luckow said.

The conversion will allow the students to use the skills they've acquired in class to complete a project that has purpose.

"We want to have something that will benefit a person or persons," he said.

The students have plenty of other opportunities to put their skills to work during the school year.

Their construction skills were tested earlier this month at a SkillsUSA competition at Catalina High Magnet School, in midtown.

Senior Donny Landreville, who wants to study construction management in college, earned a second-place finish in the solo electrical contest.

Landreville and three of his classmates will compete March 27 and 28 at the 2012 SkillsUSA Arizona Championships at the Phoenix Convention Center.

He and the other students plan to compete in the four-person TeamWorks contest, where students have to demonstrate masonry, plumbing, electrical and carpentry skills.

"We're able to go out there and show off our skills and be able to compete with other students who also have the same skills," Landreville said.

Junior Chandler Babler, who was building a dog house with Landreville one recent morning, also will compete on the TeamWorks squad.

Babler has taken construction classes since his freshman year.

"It's something that we'll really use in our life and it's an overall great skill to know," he said of what they're learning in Luckow's class.

Many of today's construction workers are in their late 50s, Luckow said, and the demand for employees should be high in the years to come.

"It's one of those areas we can't outsource," he said. "It's a good field to get into. That's what we're trying to promote with this class."

While Babler and Landreville were working on their dog house, junior Austin Sanchez was binding cinder blocks together with mortar.

Sanchez plans to represent Canyon del Oro in the individual masonry competition at the state championships.

"I'm a natural at it," he said. "I get my trial and I do my work. It's like an art."

Sanchez wants to be a police officer, but said he'd also like to run his own masonry business one day.

Matti Clayton is a first-year construction student. She also takes an architecture class at Canyon del Oro.

"Construction helps with architecture because you actually get to do it hands-on compared to just designing it," she said.

Clayton has learned to use all the hand tools in Luckow's classroom and is now mastering the lathe, a machine for shaping material by rotating it.

At a recent class, she was working on smoothing out a wand.

Clayton, a junior, and Savannah Salazar were on the four-person team that won first place in the team build contest at the SkillsUSA competition early this month in Tucson.

Clayton and Salazar will next partner for the state championships, where they will compete in the two-person building contest.

"There's usually not a lot of girls," Clayton said. "It's nice to be able to show the boys that girls can do just as well as they can."