WAKE FOREST, N.C. -- Some Wake County students have traded pens and paper for welders and saws. They are learning how to repair cars at Wake Forest-Rolesville High School. It's the only auto repair class in the district.

Wednesday morning, senior Cody Davis practiced welding to repair the tailgate of a Blazer.

"I can do a lot of stuff, like painting, welding, doing dent work, that sort of thing," Davis said. "I just love working on cars. That's my passion really. After my second year in here, I fixed my dad's car. He had a messed up door and I fixed that for him and re-painted it."

"[The students] do pretty much the same thing a shop does," explained Lindell Perry, the class instructor. "We don't go into the detail as far as framework and stuff like that, but as far as the basics of priming and painting and welding and stuff like that, we pretty much take care of it.

"We only do body [work]. We don't do any engine work at all."

Perry says the hands-on work sparks a lot of interest from students.

Davis enrolled in the class during his first year in high school.

"I get to come in here and work on cars pretty much. It's what I like doing the best," he said.

Perry says the course even lays the foundation for careers because many of the students want to parlay their skills into a job.

"Most of them, they really want to go on and be in the workforce doing collision repair," Perry said. "I have several out there that go on to be an apprentice and go on to the journeyman stage, which means they're pretty much at the point where they can go on and get a job."

Perry followed a similar path after he enrolled in the course as a high school student.

"I was a graduate of this class in 1974," he said, "and I was out in the field for 16 years, [working in] dealerships and so forth, and I came back to teach and I've been here 17 years."

"It comes full circle when you see these students out there in the workforce," Perry added.

"I have many, many students and you can go out to the shop and see them out there working and making a decent living and that's what it's all about."

He believes his class does more than teach the tools of the trade.

"I've had many kids tell me, 'If it wasn't for this class, I would drop out,'" Perry said.

After four years of studying under Perry, Davis says he's dreaming big.

"I want to eventually have my own shop, doing body work and that sort of thing," he said.

Perry says people in the community often bring their own cars for the students to work on, but he said that's so popular that customers have to put their names on a waiting list.