Sam Houston High School construction teacher Jeramy Guillory hit the ground running with his students this year to make sure they have the skills they need to be career ready. 

The veteran teacher brought his 20 years of experience teaching and in construction to the CTE construction classes there this year, and is now bringing projects to life while helping his students in the areas of math and communication. 

Before coming to San Antonio to be closer to family during the pandemic, he taught five years in Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, where, following Hurricane Dorian in September 2019, he got an early lesson in virtual instruction, and his classes ultimately ended up in the field, helping rebuild homes damaged by the hurricane.  

Now, working with a different kind of hurricane on a small budget, he and his 18 students in the Construction I, Construction II and Practicum classes built six doghouses which will be sold to buy the supplies to finish a tiny house in the spring. The doghouses were a lesson in residential framing, which Guillory says can earn his students $20 an hour.

“There’s a huge demand for framers and carpenters,” Guillory said. “When we built these doghouses, it was exactly how you would frame a house.”

While they were building the houses, which he hopes will sell for $300-$500 each, the students were reinforcing skills in math by calculating the rafters, converting fractions to decimals, and inches to feet to get their supplies. 

Nationwide, students are struggling from gaps in core areas caused by the pandemic, and Guillory is doing his part to fill them while engaging the students in hands-on lessons.

“Especially coming back from COVID, a lot of students are struggling with verbal communication skills,” he said. 

In response, he spends 15-20 minutes in every class period leading exercises in communication. 

The lessons are paying off. Recently, in one 90-minute class, his upper-level students created props for the theatre department for its upcoming production of A Christmas Carol. With designated team members for measuring, sawing and power tools, they created a desk with casters that converts to a bed and a bookshelf that converts to a headboard within a single class period.