“We exist to help young men apprentice themselves to Jesus Christ…”

In recent years, there has been a veritable boom in Catholic trade schools, and more are on the horizon. A pioneer in this area is Harmel Academy, a male residential, post-secondary Catholic trade school, opened in the inauspicious months of the COVID lockdown in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Indeed, Harmel received its final operational license on March 12, 2020, a day before Michigan’s governor ordered a shutdown.

While Harmel launched in a less-than-ideal time, it has weathered the storm. It graduated its first class in spring 2022 and has graduated two cohorts since.

Harmel consists of a one-year Foundation of Skilled Stewardship Program (FSS), Apprenticeship-Track Programs, and a house of formation called Venturi House. The FSS can serve as a standalone gap-year program or a foundation for one of the apprenticeship-track programs, during which a student focuses on a specific skilled trade. Harmel’s students study, learn the trades, and pray, eat, and live together.

One of the highlights of the program is its rigorous focus on and integrated nature of the humanities. Students read and discuss the classics amid sawdust, tools, and die machines. They even have a chaplain, Fr. Dominic Couturier, who doubles as their welding instructor.

To learn more about Harmel, its vision, and its plans for the future, I sat down with Harmel’s President, David Michael Phelps, at Harmel’s campus. Phelps is an impressive person in his own right. A former professor of English at Baker College, Phelps is also an accomplished filmmaker whose work includes For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles and Desire of the Everlasting Hills. Phelps was also instrumental in the re-founding of Sacred Heart School in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as a classical school, Sacred Heart Academy. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

CWR: Where and what did you study?

David Michael Phelps: I studied English and Latin at Hope College. And then I did my Master’s at Central Michigan in English literature. And I thought I was on sort on the academic track. But after I got married and finished my Master’s, I knew that I didn’t want to write essays about other people’s stuff my whole life. That’s when I started working for the Acton Institute. I did a little work in think tankery and continued to work with them contractually for about the next ten years or so. But I also continued to teach. And I did some work in filmmaking, sold a few screenplays and things like that, which is an unconventional way of putting food on the table.

My work then was in basically communication and education for several years. Brian Black, who’s one of Harmel’s co-founders, is a neighbor of mine. Harmel came on my radar because I was the creative director at an agency at the time, and Harmel needed some help with some of its communication strategies. Harmel’s founders were going to try launching this new type of school. Brian and I had a beer, and he told me about the school, and it just clicked.

What I saw was the integration that was so lacking in the formation of young men. It wasn’t simply an intellectual life, nor was it a program where work or trades would be viewed in distinction from the intellectual life, but integrated with the life of the mind, the life of the soul. and in prayer. And it clicked.

And then when it came time to launch, Brian approached me and said he was looking for someone who knew enough about communication, education, and the trades; he invited me to join on.

CWR: Tell us a little bit about Ryan Rohl and Brian Black and why they thought this was needed.

David Michael Phelps: Ryan Pohl was a machinist and then later became an educator, and Brian Black ran a historic building restoration company. They were buddies who would get together for drinks every once in a while and just shoot the breeze like guys do. One of the topics that continued to come up was: Why can’t we find good quality guys? What’s the problem here? Why?

And, first, it becomes a utilitarian question: Where do you find these guys? How do you do it? But I think, especially now, people are realizing the problem is deeper than that. We’re failing young men somehow because we have all this work and no one seems interested or skilled, even when it comes to base level skills or technical skills.

They prayed about it and, as Ryan Pohl tells the story, he was praying about it one day while he was working on his boat engine and he asked the question, “God, why doesn’t a school exist where young men can have this sort of integrated spiritual formation, intellectual formation, skilled traits, training, why doesn’t that exist?” And he said he felt as if the Lord was saying, “Well, because you haven’t started one yet.” So, he and Brian sort of got to work on it, asking what it would take to do that.

CWR: In the most basic form, what would you say is the mission and purpose of Harmel Academy?

David Michael Phelps: The basic version is that we exist to help young men apprentice themselves to Jesus Christ, specifically in their work. The problem is that men aren’t called to a big enough adventure. With what they’re given, they don’t have the ability to read the language of the glory that exists specifically in their work. This is true for everyone, I think, but especially young men. And so what we try to do is create a community where they can learn a way of life. The master of that way of life is Christ himself, and we are apprentices to him. And we do that first in prayer, but then that prayer gets taken into the work, so to speak, as you understand the work as prayer.

There’s a heavy Benedictine thread that runs through this, and we try to help these guys live a way of life where they can learn to see that it’s our Lord who’s at work and that you’re joining His work. So work isn’t this thing you do so that you can have what you need to support your communities, even though it does that, or to give money to the Church, although you could do that. But work is the place where our Lord is—and we should want to be where He is. And it’s the Lord who is creating and redeeming the world, and He’s doing it everywhere.

CWR: What are some of the practical ways you help these young men learn that they’re living with the Lord? And to understand work in that sense?

David Michael Phelps: First is learning how to live in the rhythm of the world in reality. And the Church tells us, amongst other things, how to do this. We sanctify time with prayer. When the man wakes up, the first thing that he does is go and praise God. We pray in community, and each man who’s here, this is what he knows he’s signing up for. Liturgy of the Hours isn’t optional. That’s what we do here. It’s standard. The men pray Lauds, Vespers, and Compline. We teach them some basic chant, and then the more complicated chant for Compline.

In that sense, it is a little monastic, even though, obviously, these are laymen. The first element is living in a rhythm of prayer and attention.

The second is that we also carve out time for a pretty robust study of theology, philosophy, and literature, all thematically based around understanding this type of vocation. Part of it is giving them the language to understand what this vocation. Simone Weil has a great essay on study, and she says the reason we study is not to know things—the reason that we study is because it increases our capacity to pay attention. And without attention, you cannot pray, and without prayer, you cannot love.

And so that’s why you study. We do all of our humanities right there in the shop.

The third element is work. We have a prayer here that begins, “Our Lord is working here and now, let us join him with joy and thanksgiving.” We’re always trying to put ourselves into the presence of God in the context of our work. Not only can the work teach us about God by how it sings of His glory, but also how our response to that is not just a way of glorifying God, but in a sense is the glory of God coming alive within the work itself. There’s an attentiveness to your work that’s not only essential to doing good work, but is also attentive to making your work prayer.

The last thing, practically, is that when you live in community you learn some things about yourself. It’s not as if you are off the hook. These guys spend a lot of time together and close to each other all the time. As you can imagine, that isn’t always smooth. If you’re committed to a community and things get rough, well, you’d better find where grace is operative in that. And that’s not always easy. And this is why I say that this is maybe how it’s a little bit different from maybe some normal post-secondary institutions. Even though lots of post-secondary institutions have components of many of those things, what we really try to do is make sure that all four of those things—prayer, study, work, and community—are integrated.

CWR: If a young man is interested in Harmel, and he wants to jump in, what would that look like?

David Michael Phelps: So, a man comes here and he commits for a year for what is called the foundation year. And in that foundation year, it’s two semesters: he studies the basics and the fundamentals of a variety of trades. That is machining, welding, fabrication, HVAC, plumbing, automotive, electrical, and more. The reason we begin with a broad base of trades is that increasingly young men are showing interest in skilled trades, but they often come with little experience. A guy will say something like, “I would like to be an electrician.” Well, why is that? “Because it’s what I’ve heard of.” That’s a bad reason to be an electrician and to start down that track.

In any given apprenticeship track, once you’re on that track, it’s not transferable. If you get a year into your training as an electrician, and then you decide you want to be a machinist, it’s not like the courses transfer. You’re starting over. So it’s really important that when a guy sits on an apprenticeship track, he can commit to that track—it’s traditionally four years, all said and done.

We spend a year with a guy in discernment and formation. You can think of it as basic training. Once the guy’s here for a semester, at that point, he can then apply to be part of one of our apprenticeship programs.. And he can become a formal apprentice starting with the third semester.

CWR: He has to make it through that whole year?

David Michael Phelps: Correct. But he can start applying after his first semester. Now, if all the man wants is that first year—if he wants a gap year, for example—now he walks away with the formation that the study and the community provides, it gives him a broad base of very applicable manual skills that will serve him his whole life long. It also makes him employable in certain ways. Let’s say he wants to go to college, and he’s going to work his way through college. You can most likely make more as a welder than he can working in a bookstore.

So, it gives them a good foundation to begin whatever is next. Now that “whatever’s next” may be apprenticeship training with us. Currently, we offer apprenticeships for machinists, millwrights [machine builders], and electricians. We’re also working on a new apprenticeship for HVAC technicians and a certification program for welders and fabricators.

Essentially, the apprentice year is a second calendar year living in the community, continuing study, getting what’s called related technical instruction, that’s what’s required for an apprenticeship. In a formal apprenticeship, you work with a collaborating shop, and while you’re living in our community here, you’re working about 24 to 30 hours a week. And then when your related technical instruction is done, you just switch over to full-time with that shop. A journeyman’s card usually requires about 6,000 to 8,000 total hours on the job, depending on the trade.

When he is done living in the community, he will have about another three years or so after he is done with us, something like that. But we want to make certain that the guy who enters into the apprenticeship is set on that path. If it’s an apprenticeship track that we don’t currently offer, then we’re happy to help direct him to what that would be.

When a man is done with his training, he can continue to live another year in the community in what we call the Venturi House, which is a sort of residency. Men continue to work full time in their trades, but take up leadership positions called “Stewardships” within the community.

CWR: In the first year, what is a typical day or week like? What are they doing from morning through the end of the day?

David Michael Phelps: We run all classes here in a modular fashion. In other words, in your trades instruction, you’re only ever taking one class at a time. But we run them like workdays.

You’ll take one class at a time and we try to run it like a workday. So a guy gets up, has breakfast, Lauds is at 8:00, and then he heads to the shop (if it is a class day), and then he’s in the shop till two or three in the afternoon. And the courses are project-based, so whatever we’re learning is built around a hands-on project. There’s very little lecture. We build machines, sheds, go-karts, furniture; it depends on what the module is. Those modules are anywhere from four to six weeks at a crack before you move on to the next module.

Lunchtime is when we do humanity studies and work. Whatever we’re studying in a particular two-week session, it will either be discussion or study time, which is when they get oral examinations done. It’s a time of debate and study, and then they go back to work in the afternoon. The evenings are mostly to themselves. They have plenty of studying to do. Vespers is at 5:15, community dinner is at 6:00, and then they have to be back in the oratory by 8:45 for Compline.

The foundation guys are in their classes and labs on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The apprentices are in their labs on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Their workdays fall on opposite days. so there’s always someone getting up early to go to work.

CWR: Where can people learn more? And can you leave us with any parting thoughts?

David Michael Phelps: You can go to our website, HarmelAcademy.org. Feel free to email or call us. You can follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

I think there’s a sense in which, 30 years ago, homeschooling was weird, but it matured and has become something excellent. About 10 or 15 years ago, we saw a different move in Catholic education, around classical models and new ways of curriculum. And new partnerships, parishes, and families, now that we’re 10 to 15 years into that experiment.

I feel like where we are with trades formation is where classical schooling was 10 years ago—and where homeschooling was 20 or 30 years ago. I hope Catholics continue to embrace it.