In the metals shop on a recent morning at Sweet Home High School, Bode Nichols and Cohen Gutierrez were bending rebar into L-shaped stakes, using a gas-powered torch.
In the next room, Caiden Matthews and Memphis Gay were welding fish to stakes such as the ones Nichols and Gutierrez were creating.
In yet another room stood a plasma table on which students and teacher Austin Hart used a computer-controlled torch to direct a superheated, ionized…