It's almost finals season at Boston’s North Bennet Street School, and the piano technology students are honing a new skill: how to tune the 88-key instrument in under three hours.

Their professor is Alex LaCava, who started working in the field around the age of 18. One of the benefits of coming to a school like North Bennet Street School, LaCava said, is that a lot of students get job offers before they’ve even graduated.

“I'm not only teaching how to be a piano technician, I'm teaching how to make a living as a piano technician,” said LaCava. The school offers an accredited nine-month piano technician program, with the option to continue for a second nine months. In the first session, students learn basic piano technology, like tuning for in-home piano service.

“At the end of that program, you are ready to go out into the world with your toolkit,” says LaCava. Students pursuing the second session will learn, among many things, how to rebuild grand pianos.

“We're a path that could be really robust and could lead to a really successful career,” said North Bennet Street School president Dr. Sarah B. Cunningham. “We shouldn't be thought of as an alternative to the norm.”

The school’s head of carpentry, Peter Smith, agrees: “It's really important to understand that we're not here to teach do-it-yourselfers. We're not here to teach hobbyists; we're here to teach students who want a career and not just a job.”

The school runs nine professional training programs, with tuition costs ranging from around $23,000 for their nine-month locksmithing program to $85,000 for the three-year violin-making program. Seventy percent of the school’s qualified students have their tuition offset through financial aid. There’s also a scholarship program that awards over $1 million each year. For many here, the sticker price is well worth it.

Careers in the trades could also be more resilient as many fields face uncertainty due to AI, said Robert Schwartz, senior advisor to the Project on Workforce at Harvard.

“The one thing I think is pretty clear is the technical jobs, technician-level jobs, and particularly the traditional trades and crafts, they're not going anywhere. They’re not going to be replaced,” he said.

On a nearby job site with an 18th-century house, alum Ivan Abarca-Torres said he left a job in academia to learn carpentry at North Bennet Street School. His passion for his newfound career is clear right away.

“When you connect your mind, your heart, and your hands to do meaningful things,” said Abarca-Torres, “it gives you something very deep.”