FROM TEXTBOOK TO REAL LIFE

A High School Geology Buff’s Dream Classroom & Club

- AMY GRISAK

Meet the Geology Club at Great Falls High School in Great Falls, Montana, where teachers Matt Krahe and Mike Hodges help students understand Earth's treasures and how to turn these treasures into a profitable craft. Ultimately, their students can keep the pieces they make or sell them to benefit the club and earn volunteer hours for the National Honor Society.

"I've been teaching geology for over 15 years and wanted to do something where the kids could apply this study to a hands-on activity," says Krahe. "It's a place for them to learn about rocks and the equipment used, and to do something good."

It's also a way to create something real, offering the knowledge of taking a raw mineral and bringing out its beauty through lapidary, allowing students to tap into an art form that has been around for thousands of years.

AN EXCEPTIONAL CLASSROOM

Their spacious geology classroom is an outdoor lover's dream. Two-thirds of it holds long tables and chairs facing a large-screen television. Fossil and mineral specimens occupy every inch of horizontal space on the shelves, encircling much of the room. At the same time, vertical maps of sedimentary layers and geological formations hang closer to the main instruction area.

The second third of the class is the workshop where students can cab and polish gemstones using three CabKing cabbing machines, two with six-inch wheels and one with three-inch wheels. The Geology Club is available to any of the 60 to 90 geology class students each year who want to delve deeper into this study.

AN ENVIABLE COLLECTION