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Students used hammers to stamp different shapes into pieces of leather in the last moments of a maker space class at Thunder Mountain Middle School. Shortly afterward, another class filed in and got to work. Student Nia Paw learned how to dye a leather wallet from her classmates. She put on latex gloves and poured out thick, dark dye to make the wallet brown.

“We have dye and, like, some sort of cloth, and we have to rub it in, in like, a circular motion,” she said.

This isn’t a typical class – it’s part of the Juneau School District’s summer school program to get students ready for middle school.

Around 40 to 50 incoming seventh graders spent three weeks at Thunder Mountain Middle School in July as part of

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