Kevin Bean was always a fan of rock star Jimi Hendrix.

“What people often don’t remember is that his band was called The Jimi Hendrix Experience,” the 72-year-old said.

So when he started a woodworking course at Paget Primary three years ago, he jokingly called it The Kevin Bean Experience.

In the class, students ages 9 to 12 learn skills such as sawing, chiselling and workshop safety. At the end of the “experience” they have a box or bench or something else to show for their efforts.

When The Royal Gazette visited the boys’ Primary 4 woodworking class on a Thursday morning, students were learning how to saw.

According to the students, getting to saw was the best thing about the class. The worst thing was also sawing.

Sawing something sounds like a fairly easy activity to the uninitiated. You push the saw back and forth over wood and make a cut. This Royal Gazette reporter quickly learnt just how wrong that was.

Some of the boys huffed and puffed with sweat coming off their foreheads in an effort to get the saw through the wood.

“You’re fighting the wood,” Mr Bean told one of them. He then called the group of five together and explained that they had to keep the saw level.

“Imagine that there is air underneath the saw,” the retired Bermuda College professor said. After listening intently they went back to their stations and tried again with more success.

The class is part of a Hamilton Rotary Club adopt-a-school programme.

“This school was chosen because one of our past presidents, Rick Richardson, went to it,” Mr Bean said. “He remembered how he would have to go to another school to do what they called, in those days, manual training.”

The dream would be to expand the woodworking to other schools.

Mr Bean teaches both boys and girls, but separately.

“With girls, I do not have to break any bad habits,” he said. “They listen and they follow instructions. The boys think they know everything.”

The class is not only about learning to saw or use a chisel safely. It is a chance for students to practise their listening skills. There is a lot of mathematics involved from fractions to measuring.

On the classroom walls are inspiring messages such as “If it is to be, it is up to me”.

Students seemed enthusiastic and excited at the chance to use real tools.

“The fun thing about this class is that you get to make stuff,” said Alario Faries, 9.

The intention is not necessarily to turn them into carpenters. However, Bermudians in the profession are highly in demand. According to the website Salary Expert, a carpenter shop machine man master’s gross salary here is $60,526.

Mr Bean explained that in other places carpenters tended to specialise but here they typically do it all, from cabinets to crown moulding.

He wanted to be a carpenter from the age of 5. When he was 12, joy of joys, he was allowed to help his carpenter uncle Carl Pringle work on a project. Two years later he unofficially apprenticed with his woodworking teacher on the weekends.

“The only school I wanted to go to was the Bermuda Technical Institute,” he said. “I had an older cousin who had gone there and my older brother went there. I was next in line.”

It was not to be. His primary school principal was supposed to put his name forward but did not, much to his disappointment. Later, she confessed that she thought he had the material to become a Berkeley Institute student.

In those days working with your hands was looked down upon by some people.

Mr Bean was always a little envious that his older brother who did go to the Bermuda Technical Institute, was a better carpenter than himself.

“He hated carpentry,” Mr Bean said. “He did not like the dust involved but the school held the students to really high standards.”

He never lost sight of his dream to become a carpenter but added teaching along the way. He did his teacher training in London, England, at Shoreditch College of Education, a school that specialised in woodwork, metalworking and silversmithing. He later did a bachelor’s and master’s in education at St Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

After producing many successful business leaders and entrepreneurs in the community, the Bermuda Technical Institute closed in 1972. The reason for its closure has always been controversial. Some said it was to make way for the Bermuda College, which opened two years later, others alleged it was too successful and was embarrassing some of the other more academic secondary schools.

Mr Bean never forgot the Bermuda Technical Institute model. In university he researched why it did so well. He decided the reason was because it was applied education.

“Everything they did was relevant to the next class,” Mr Bean said. “In English they would have to write about what they did in the workshop. So if they did not pay attention in the workshop, they would not pass English.”

He started teaching when he was 23 and eventually became a senior lecturer at the Bermuda College. He retired in 2020 but has been back at the college for various short-term projects.

The class at Paget Primary usually starts with students making their own foot-long ruler. They also have to learn safety rules, such as to wear goggles and not run in the classroom. Mr Bean’s goal is to teach them how to manipulate the wood, understand how it works and see the necessity for being precise.

His hope is to change lives in some way. The woodworking is an opportunity for the students to take some of the skills they are learning in other classes, such as fractions, and apply them in a real setting.

“They are learning how to measure,” he said. “They are working on focusing. They are even learning how to align their bodies because you have to hold yourself in a certain way to saw.”

Last month, Mr Bean was recognised by the Rotary Club for his work in the programme.

“I was not anticipating anything like that but it was great to be recognised,” Mr Bean said.

He is proud to have taught many Bermudians who went on to become Works & Engineering supervisors or foremen, or run their own businesses.

“A couple of them have them have branched into facilities management,” he said.