The modern shop class

Mike Jeffcoat grew up taking things apart and putting them together again. But the Chelsea resident had a hard time getting his 10-year-old son, Jack, to join him in working on projects in their garage, until he saw his son watching YouTube personalities building similar projects.

“I’ve been making stuff — and breaking stuff — since I was little. And I never heard the term ‘maker’ before,” Jeffcoat said. “I was trying to get him in the garage with me, and when I realized there were makers on YouTube, I saw a connection.”

Makers encompass an array of people, from wood and metalworkers to robotics programmers and inventors or artists working with a variety of materials. 

Jeffcoat said attending the 2016 Maker Faire in Decatur, Georgia, with his son and father was a pivotal experience.

“When [Jack] can walk up to a table and be handed five or six items and he left with something in his hands, he was so proud of what he’d made because he didn’t know he even had the ability to do that,” Jeffcoat said. “Once I saw it in him, I started looking around, and it was on every kid’s face.”

Once they returned to Birmingham, Jeffcoat realized options for kids interested in homemade technology and crafts were thin on the ground. Groups such as MAKEbhm or Red Mountain Makers, or even the woodworking guild Jeffcoat belongs to, aren’t typically open to kids younger than teenagers. Workshop classes in local schools also have become less common because of liability issues, Jeffcoat said.

“There’s no reason to wait until you’re 18 years old to learn how to do stuff,” he said. “They see these guys building something from nothing [on YouTube], and they’re inspired by it, but they turn the TV off, and there’s nowhere to go. There’s nowhere to nurture that inspiration.”

Jeffcoat works full time as a Homewood police officer, but in his spare time he began conceptualizing a mobile, kid-friendly maker space similar to the STE(A)M (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) Truck in Atlanta. He recently created We Make Makers, a nonprofit, and began raising funds in May to get the project going.

“Being able to get the same look on the kids’ faces here that I saw there [at the Maker Faire], that’s the main reason [for doing this],” Jeffcoat said.

We Make Makers is an affiliate of the STE(A)M Truck. Jeffcoat said he plans for the truck, similar to a food truck, to have a custom-built workshop inside for local makers to teach kids everything from how to use basic tools to building furniture and simple robotics programming.

His primary target will be public schools, as a way to provide hands-on, workshop style experiences that the schools don’t provide anymore. Jeffcoat said he will offer one-day events teaching classes about experiments and a few small skills, as well as yearlong classes with a curriculum for a group of students to follow and learn a larger set of abilities and crafts.

Screwdrivers and hammers aren’t the only tools that will be in Jeffcoat’s workshop. He said robotics kits, Legos, K’Nex and more can be educational tools in the We Make Makers truck. Their projects could include handmade fidget spinners, which are a popular kids’ toy, as well as constructing cardboard bridges or making paper airplanes to learn about lift and balance.

“My goal is every class leaves with something tangible,” Jeffcoat said.

It’s not just about the skills the kids leave with. Jeffcoat said in learning about the STE(A)M Truck, he found maker workshops help kids with problem-solving, information retention and self-confidence as they see a project come together under their own hands.

“It’s self-reliance; it’s realizing your own potential,” Jeffcoat said.

In addition to school programs, Jeffcoat said he wants to make a regular evening group workshop, sort of like a junior guild, that kids can attend if their school doesn’t have a We Make Makers program. These events would be free to the participants. To get their name out there, Jeffcoat also wants to bring the We Make Makers truck to Pepper Place, the Birmingham Zoo, botanical gardens and other hot spots.

“If your school says no, I don’t want those kids to be cut because that defeats the purpose of the whole program,” he said.

If he raises enough money, Jeffcoat said he plans to build the truck during the summer and start doing a few events in August before launching school programs with the new school year. The first year will include only Shelby County schools, but he wants to expand to Jefferson County in the second year and add trucks and staff over time to cover multiple counties.

Through We Make Makers, Jeffcoat said he is hoping to provide some of the same life skills and practical abilities he learned while pulling things apart as a child.

“For me, it’s a passion thing. I want my son to go to the Woodworkers Guild, and he can’t. I want him to go to the maker space, and he can’t. And I can teach him a lot — I know a little about a lot of things. I don’t have the skill set to teach him everything,” Jeffcoat said. “Luckily, I was 10 and 12 working on cars with my granddad and dad. My parents always — if I wanted to take something apart, they always let me. They regretted it most of the time, but they let me.”

For more information, go to wemakemakers.org.