Clay Oven Part 1

Each Thursday afternoon, students at MFS get a break from regular classes to participate in a Minicourse. Student select from a variety of offerings at the beginning of each quarter and its gives them a chance to work in a multiage group on or off campus. The minicourses are led by teachers, parents, other community members or visitors are designed to be experiential and a time when we all learn new skills.

Over the past year plus, my personal favorites have been Frisbee and woodworking. I’ve led kitchen chemistry and other science related courses, but since I already have much experience in those areas, it’s the new topics that create the most excitement and growth.

This quarter, I and a group of eleven students are working with a family visiting from Vermont to build a clay oven. We have built prototypes using mixtures of clay and sand and are now working on the real deal. I did not realize how big a project this is until we had a list of necessary and desired materials, collected them, and learned that this project could take many months if we worked only on Thursday afternoons. Our goal is to build a working oven large enough to bake bread or a few pizzas with local materials, keep costs to an absolute minimum, and to utilize the muscle, skills and knowledge of the community.

The site we chose, the wood shed behind the school, needed some organizing to free a large enough space for the oven. Last Saturday, a group of us carefully moved wood while keeping our eyes open and alerting others when we encountered nails and scorpions. Before picking up anything, we tapped and kicked or pried things up before putting our hands anywhere - not one snake.

This past Thursday, our group hauled wheelbarrows and buckets of sand, rock and concrete blocks to the site, a woodshed behind the school. After moving two tons of materials, the students ceremoniously placed in the first row of blocks on a bed of level gravel. The visiting family, the brains and primary muscle, of the operation, arrived very early Friday AM to continue the work and I will be meeting them shortly to help with the massive base.