What a delight it was to walk into the Building Construction Technology classroom at Tennessee College of Applied Technology in Nashville — my alma mater where I spent 16 months with a herd of men — to find the workshop filled with girls!

Organized and led by the women of Turner Construction Company, the inaugural class of Girls Who Build! (exclamation point intentional) kicked off today at TCATN with classes and hands-on activities to introduce high school students to the building trades.

Buttercup was honored to be invited to speak to the group, right on the heels of Dr. Heather Brown, professor of concrete and construction management at Middle Tennessee State University.

In the two-day camp, students will have a chance to put Dr. Brown’s technical lessons to use as they build their own concrete lamps (pictured here curing in their forms).

Who knows what lesson they’ll take from Buttercup’s ramblings about being a middle-aged mom in construction school, but if I left them with anything, I hope it was to encourage them to develop technical skills sooner than later. If I had it all to do over again, I’d learn to build things earlier in life. But it’s never to late to be a Woman Who Builds!