Israel Camargo carefully moves wood piece after wood piece against a spinning device to give each one a smooth finish.
He occasionally walks around the room, checking on other builders and how their projects are coming along.
"You really don't want have splinters in your fingers," Camargo said, explaining why he is smoothing the edges.
Camargo is a student at the Multiple Careers Magnet Center, a high school for students 18 and older who have disabilities. The center teaches the students employment skills.
"We are making horses by putting the feet and the body together," Camargo said, talking about the rocking horses he has been building in his construction class.
Camargo and his classmates are building more than 100 rocking horses to donate to the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas, which takes in families who have children being treated at nearby hospitals.
The students started the latest project in early November under the guidance of Terry Stotts, who started the construction class more than a decade ago.
"They come here, and a lot of them can't speak," Stotts said of his students. "A lot of them can't write."
That's why Stotts wants to give his students real-life skills they can use in a career. He said not everyone needs to go attend a university.
"They push college, everyone going to college," Stotts said. "That is great, but there are so many well-paying, high-paying jobs using your hands."
One of the other students, Marvin Yarberry, never takes his hands off the corded hand planer or his eyes off the block of wood. He knows what that block will turn into.
"We are doing horses, tables, reindeer," Yarberry said.
It's hard for Yarberry to articulate exactly how it feels when a rocking horse he worked on is complete, but he knows where the feeling comes from.
"Like when your heart has had a lot of feelings," Yarberry says, hitting his chest with three fingers.
Stotts wants his students to learn the feeling of giving back to others, which is why they donate the rocking horses to families at Ronald McDonald House.
"You will not believe the self-esteem in these kids, how high it gets when they are making something with their hands," Stotts said.
These students will donate the horses in December.
