Over the course of just a few minutes, the first-floor science classroom at the Linderman Education Center went from silent study sanctuary to a cacophony of woodworking last week, as students traded their notebooks and pens for chisels, saws, and planers to create archery bows.
“Don’t force it,” teacher Jacob Deitz told one student using a mallet to chisel out a handgrip. “This is where you’ve got to be gentle, and take a little of it out at once.”
Deitz largely maintained his distance, letting his students work with the tools to craft beautiful, wooden bows, only stepping in when anyone had a question. This hands-off approach is purposeful, because it allows the kids to make their own mistakes.
Natural consequences are a big part of the reason Deitz teaches the students how to make bows; if a certain design structure fails to hold up under the tension of pulling back the drawstring, the bamboo backing or laminated maple strips might crack.
Such an outcome can be disappointing, said senior Anri Freitag, whose first bow broke under the strain, but it’s also part of the learning process. She was working on her second bow in class last week, and said breaking the first one taught her an important lesson in patience.
“Also, don’t expect things to turn out the way you thought they would,” Freitag said.
Deitz, who has been teaching at Linderman for four years, said he wanted to find a new lab project for the students to have an opportunity for hands-on learning, and attempted to start up a woodshop, which didn’t work out.
The bows, however, did.
“I was looking for a big ticket item that kids would be interested in,” Deitz said.
The general culture of hunting in Northwest Montana along with the popularity of the bow-and-arrow shooting heroine-protagonist of “The Hunger Games” drew kids to the bow-making class, he said.
And while the students create their bows, they also learn about the importance of environmental conservation and have discussions about sportsmanship and hunting practices, such as fair chase.
“There’s just something pure about going out and shooting a bow; it’s just a stick and a string,” Deitz said.
Once the bows are finished, the students will likely take a field trip to shoot them, and learn about the physics that go into the arrow’s flight from the drawstring.
Seventeen-year-old junior Tyler Fralin said he enjoyed making a bow because it was a work of his own creation, complete with Tiki decorations on the tips. He learned not only from his teacher, but also from watching other students have successes or make mistakes.
“I like how we just get to do it, without constant instructions,” Fralin said.
With only a few weeks left for some of the students to finish their bows, the work was quick and efficient. Some wore headphones while chiseling, and others measured and perfected the angles on their cuts into the maple and bamboo.
Some of the bows will crack, and others will successfully shoot arrows into the sky. Most will end up on the students’ walls, artful commemorations of lessons learned.
“They accomplish something, whether they shoot their bows or not,” Deitz said.