OAK CREEK — For three hours a day, five days a week, Danielle Ziegert is doing something most people never do in their life, let alone as a 17-year-old. She is building a house.
“There was just a hole in the ground. That’s all there was, and now there’s a roof. There’s all these walls we built, and electrical, everything’s been put into it," she said.
But Ziegert isn't just building a house. She is setting an example for other young women and proving construction jobs are for anyone.
“Whoever is qualified should be here, and it shouldn’t ever be determined by gender, or any race, color, religion, anything," she said.
She is the lone girl in an advanced building construction class at Oak Creek High School. Students like Danielle spend hours each day at this house in Oak Creek building nearly every aspect of it. It's for students who want to pursue the trades, and they call themselves Knight Construction.
According to the Institute For Women’s Policy Research in 2021, just 11 percent of all people in construction-related fields were women. Danielle wants to see that number increase.
“It’s not just a male thing. I don’t know why it’s ever been just a male thing," Ziegert said.
She enjoys working with her hands, problem-solving, and the management side of things. Ziegert wants to get an apprenticeship in her senior year of high school and then study construction management in college.
In the eight years this class has been offered, students have built eight houses. In fact, an entire row of homes along South Shepard Avenue in Oak Creek has been built by Oak Creek high schoolers.
This isn't a normal class where students get graded by the teacher. The people who decide if the work was good enough are the inspectors.
“Has to pass inspection and, you know, you’re going to a have a future family living in a house like this, that they need to understand the kind of the impact of what they’re doing is going to have on the family living there in the future," Matthew Lonergan, the teacher of the construction classes, said.
The expectations are high and there is no room for error. The final product is an impressive house that you couldn't tell is built by teenagers. Two years ago, a house built by Knight Construction sold for more than $400,000. The home students are currently working on is a 2,200 square foot property with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths. The school district puts up all the money, and they collect the profits. The money is then used for future projects.
Students do almost all the work. They are accompanied by professional contractors who also act as mentors who are sometimes paid and other times volunteer their skills.
"They understand the importance of a program like this and trying to get students into the trades. So they're willing to work when we're here, so they’ll come and do a little setup before we get here. But then they work with the student," Lonergan said.
It's hard work. This isn't a simulation of the experience or working at a smaller scale. Students really are building a house. And Danielle is really bucking the trend to set herself as an example for other young women.
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