‘Canstruction’ teaches students educational and life lessons

Donating to the underprivileged while educating the youth sounds like two goals that cannot be met with the same activity, but White County Middle School has found a way. WCMS’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) class, taught by Christi Gooch, started their first “Canstruction” event.

Canstruction is a non-profit organization and annual event to build clever, unique designs out of canned goods that will later be donated. The temporary sculptures draw attention and intrigue, while the canned goods used will assist food shelters across the nation. Canstruction has been an annual event since 1992, but this is the first year that WCMS has participated.

While Christi Gooch organized the event and acquired the cans for the project, she has been extremely pleased with the students’ input. Around a dozen students stayed after school to put together the can sculptures. Their designs were a pencil and guitar, with the taglines “Erase Hunger” and “A fully belly is music to my ears.” The pencil was made up of 375 cans with canned potatoes, tuna, chili, and soup. The guitar was 231 cans, using baked beans and Sloppy Joe mix. Overall, the sculptures took a little less than two hours to build.

The sculptures have been standing for little over a week, and soon, they will be donated to the Food Pantry, which is more than 600 cans, plus the extra leftover cans that were not used in the design.

For a first-time effort, the STEM department is pleased with the sculptures and students’ efforts. Gooch hopes that next year the school can put together an even bigger event.

“Now that we’ve done it once, we think we could expand,” she said. “Do it on a bigger scale. I want to try and get groups working on projects, too. Have the student council make one, have the STEM class, and just really do it bigger.”

Gooch also hopes that, for next year, sponsors can come together to help support the event. Buying up that many cans is costly, and she believes that with more groups working on various projects on top of sponsors to allow more purchases, next year’s Canstruction could be a huge success.