Workers at the construction site in the area just south of Fontaine and Powers hustled like it was normal to work without pay on Monday, pulling the braces off their half-finished house and gathering resources for the next phase of construction.

The students in Dan Vogel's Building Trades classes don't mind not getting paid for their work. They know they're receiving the knowledge they need to make a living when they get out of school.

Widefield High School junior Josh Ruby was busy giving other students instruction and keeping everyone on task. That's his role as a three-year veteran and lead man on the jobsite. He was able to break away for a few minutes to tell me he plans on becoming a general contractor when he graduates from high school.

"I'll go to southern California, around the Santa Barbara area, and build custom homes for celebrities," Ruby said. "That's where the real money is floating around."

The students in Vogel's classes are fired up about entering the workforce. That's because they're getting an education that's virtually unprecedented for a high school vocational class.

For over 25 years, Widefield High School has provided project-based vocational education through its Building Trades program. The annual student-built house project was started in 1980 by instructor Lynn Kopasz. He ran the program until four years ago when Vogel took over as the Building Trades instructor for the school. The 2006-2007 student-built house is the first to utilize "green building" with an insulating concrete form.

Green building refers to the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use energy through better construction and design. Students in this year's class will learn skills above and beyond the typical frame construction previous classes have done.

"They're able to take the plumbing techniques and squaring techniques and all the things that they use for conventional framing - all that stuff is here - but they're adding a new dimension to it," Vogel said. "They're using a new material and they're accomplishing about four to five of the initial tasks in one step."

"It's been totally different," said Steven Fischler, a senior who has been in the Building Trades program for four years. "I'm not used to the Polysteel, so it's changed from having to build every wall to doing pretty much everything with concrete."

Senior Dennis Sandmore said he's grown up doing construction projects with his father at home, and the class has helped foster his interest in construction. "I've learned to cut better. That's a major thing. And this year, I've learned a lot about putting foam walls together," Sandmore said.

When Vogel told me about Polysteel ICFs (insulating concrete forms), I was expecting something complicated. But when I arrived at the site, I found the rectangular pieces looked like something you could break over your knee - two pieces of Styrofoam separated by wire resembling pieces of chain link fence. But that doesn't mean Polysteel isn't revolutionary.

"Anybody can build with these," Vogel said, "they position so easily." He picked up one of the Polysteel forms to indicate how light they are. We were standing on top of what will become the second floor of the house, the students in his Building Trades II and III class scuttling around us like bees in a hive. The walls of the house are made from these forms, which are stacked on top of each other much like Legos.

Vogel said with all of his students working, they could stack the forms one complete time around the house in10 minutes. The Polysteel forms are stacked on top of each other, and then concrete is poured into the gaps between the foam to create the walls. By itself, concrete isn't a great insulator, having an R-value of about 4 (R-value indicates the level of a material's resistance to heat flow). However, packing two inches of foam on each side of the concrete increases the value to an R-40 rating.

"Custom homebuilders are starting to look at it more seriously because it is something that they can capitalize on," Vogel said. "On the sale price of the homes number one, but also, people are really looking for an alternative to paying high heating bills. As those things go up, these systems look better and better because you can see a 20 to 30 percent energy savings."

Each year when the house is completed, it's placed on the market by New Generation Homes, an important local sponsor for the project. "Usually it's sold before we finish them," Vogel said. "People are interested in the house. We sell it and at that point, the money that's generated goes back into the school district and we do it again the next year."

Students entering the Building Trades program start out learning how to build a shed, but they learn much more than that in their introduction to the world of construction. Vogel believes safety, work ethic, and being mentally present on the jobsite are the most important skills he can impart to his beginning students.

Vogel's philosophy of giving students values they will take with them into the job market continues in the Building Trades II and III classes, where the students build a house each year.

"We do teach kids how to build a house. But it's a means to an end. I'm teaching kids how to be good workers. They can use that in anything that they ever do," Vogel said.

Students who complete the Building Trades program at Widefield High School have job placement ratios of somewhere between 90 and 100 percent, depending on the year. Local companies know these students are knowledgeable hard workers.

"I have literally 40 different companies that contact me regularly looking for students to hire," Vogel said. "Even in a slow time, I'm getting phone calls saying, 'Do you have anybody who knows how to do this?'"