What was the most unique class you have taken in high school? Gateway has a class, officially named Independent Study Student Service Learning, more simply known as the “t-shirt making class.”
The class is run by Mrs. Vendemia and Mr. Herron out in the portable. There are approximately seven students enrolled and the duties are split between teachers. Mrs. Vendemia runs the production side and Mr. Herron runs the design side. The class is less than a year old but is making great progress.
Mrs. Vendemia shares that she volunteered to teach this class, thinking it would be a fun opportunity for the kids. Mr. Herron, on the other hand, was chosen due to his photoshop skills and artistic ability.
Along with the original purpose and entrepreneurship skills, students use the class as a service-learning opportunity. Students are able to earn 10 service hours in one quarter.
Mr. Herron would like to see more of a focus on the entrepreneurship aspect in the future as, “It was meant to teach about business, creating the product, and the process that went into it,” Mr. Herron shared.
Other long-term goals and expectations consist of a better printer to make the process quicker, and possibly make the class span multiple class mods. One possibility would be to move the class to first mod to be able to utilize Flex time more easily or to combine two mods to allow more time to produce the t-shirts.
It takes a long time and specialized equipment to create a single t-shirt. The equipment includes: a UV oven, heaters (conveyor belt oven and a standing heater), a manual screen printer, a Cintiq (drawing tablet), screens, and plastic based ink.
The process is complicated and time consuming. To start, a design needs to be made and screens require preparation. The screens need emulsion, a photosensitive substance that allows the design to turn into a stencil. To get this stencil the UV oven is used to ‘burn’ the design.
After a quick rinse to reveal the stencil, the screen is attached to the screen printer and a shirt is placed on the machine. Ink is then applied to the screen and, using squeegees, students flood the stencil with ink approximately twice to push the ink through onto the shirt. The screen is then lifted the shirt is placed under a pre-heated standing heater to dry the ink. After all the shirts are made, the cleaning process begins.
The extra ink is carefully placed back into its container and the screen is sent to the sink for washing. After all the ink is removed, an emulsion degrader is applied to the screen. An overnight dry and the screen is ready for new emulsion.
The class has made shirts for seniors, Unity Day shirts, the corn toss team shirts, and variety of personal projects. Personal projects can be anything, consisting of names, pets, favorite characters, and more.
The current project is for the class to make 274 front and back shirts for Camp C.O.P.S, a camp taking place this summer. Around ten shirts can be made within an hour. Mrs. Vendemia and Mr. Herron are determined to finish the order as soon as possible.
This unique class is still in its infancy stage and has much time to grow. A major end goal for the class is to create a consistent way for students to fund the program and Gateway. With the guidance of Mrs. Vendemia and Mr. Herron, the class is making great progress toward that goal.
Read “Gateway’s First Virtual Field Trip” by Logan Reinholt to see how the screen-printing program began in 2021.
