A Parent’s Perspective

On the morning I was at the workshop, there were two other people in the building: Lisa Staggs and her youngest son, who is currently too young for the program. Staggs had brought her three older children to the workshop since they are enrolled in the homeschool program. I was able to ask for her opinion on Tidewater Wooden Boat Workshop and how she found out about it.

Staggs responded, “I found out maybe four or five years ago. A homeschool mother’s child was in the summer program and at that time there was no homeschool program here. Tom [Branyl] was doing [the workshop] with the kids after school and in the summer, and this mother approached him to ask about doing a homeschool program since the workshop wasn’t really active; nobody was here during the school days. He agreed and started the program and we’ve been doing it since then.”

We talked more about her children’s hands-on work ability. Staggs said, “I would say as far as tools go, limited hands-on.” She went on to say, “I always thought that being able to work with your hands, work with tools, do the job yourself, has always been important.... I do a lot of stuff on my own, so I wanted my kids to have that and I also realized that [those are skills] not always taught in schools anymore. I remember as a kid going to the woodshop class and I did drafting, cooking, sewing.... I have so many fond memories of those classes. Once I heard about this I was adamant that I wanted my kids to do it—not only for the skills and to learn the big tools, but to have all of those memories that I had.”

I asked if her children were reluctant to do it at first, or were they kind of anxious about it? “I don’t think they were reluctant at all”, she said. “As a matter of fact, my daughter came into the program a year sooner than the [required] age because she wanted to do it; she’d seen her twin brothers doing it and Tom was aware of us and had kind of watched her grow over those couple of years and decided that he would let her come in at a younger age. So, no…if anything, no reluctance, but a desire.”

~David Polston

tools and machines. We use the CNC machine to name the boards on the boat.”

The NEET Program

In addition to the Tidewater Wooden Boat Workshop (TWBW), there is another aspect to his work, which does focus on an apprentice program—what he refers to as NEET. Branyl explains, participants are “Not Employed, Not in Education and not in any kind of Training program. That’s where the acronym came from. I saw a study done a few years ago. They estimated probably about 12% of the youth in Hampton Roads in the age group of 17 to 24 are disconnected. So our pre-apprentice program here is for disconnected youth.

Basically, it’s a 24-week program. We teach carpentry skills through wooden boat building. We use the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, the national carpentry union. They have a program called Career Connections and basically it’s a pre-apprentice program. The first two manuals are basic tools and safety, measuring, math for carpentry, all of that. Also, it’s project based. The manuals have them building things like racks that you hang on the wall, birdhouses, sawhorses, a toolbox. In NEET, we do toolboxes; each kid makes his own toolbox. We give them tools for that, and a few other things” (he points to a workshop sawhorse).

“That sawhorse was made by our last class, because we needed one; but it’s all about construction and building boats. Through building boats and a few extra projects, we can also hit ninety percent—if not more—of all the