SMITHFIELD — Come fall, some town high school students will be spending their days working in a diner.

And outside of it. And, probably, on top of it.

The School Committee approved a proposal in April to allow high school students to participate in the New Hope Diner Project, a restoration program sponsored by the American Diner Museum where youth are given dilapidated diners to restore to their original luster.

And with that approval, Smithfield became the latest addition to the program, which already has students in East Providence and youth at the Training School in Cranston restoring diners.

“I’m excited about a project where we can get kids engaged, excited and, hopefully, we can offer them a better opportunity for their future,” said Supt. Robert O’Brien. “I really give credit to the staff and teachers we have in Smithfield. This was a creative approach to a way of offering something exciting to our kids and a real-life experience.”

The New Hope Diner Project aims to provide youth skills in historical preservation and renovation. According to Daniel Zilka, director of the Providence-based American Diner Museum, the roughly 4,500 diners that dotted the country at one time served as the ancestors of modern day fast-food restaurants. They used local produce and developed local specialties to separate themselves from the diner down the road. A few diners still exist across the country, including some in Rhode Island such as Modern Diner in Pawtucket.

The project’s first restoration was at the Rhode Island Training School, where juvenile offenders worked to rebuild 1940s-era Hickey’s Diner, which was based in Taunton. Students in East Providence and Job Corps in Exeter are also working on restoring diners, and with Smithfield’s approval, they joined the list of partners in this program.

“They were short on revenue and we thought, if we could provide them with a diner, they could have a working classroom right on their campus,” Zilka said. “I reached out and said would you be interested in having a diner or a number of diners to restore? You wouldn’t have to go anywhere. Walk 20 feet and the kids could begin working.”

The shrink-wrapped Apple Tree Diner sits on stilts in a storage yard in Pawtucket, though Zilka wouldn’t specify where. The organization acquired the diner in 1998, and has many of the parts necessary to begin the restoration.

The Apple Tree Diner started its life as the Worcester Diner #659 in the 1930s. Despite the name, it was housed in Quincy, Mass. Within a few years, the diner was sold, moved to Dedham, Mass., and dubbed “the Apple Tree Diner.” According to Zilka, the diner underwent a number of renovations and even a name change over the years, as it was eventually gutted and used as a kitchen for grilling and deep frying at O’Keefe’s Restaurant in Dedham. But its apple roots, Zilka said, made it a good fit for the Smithfield program. Smithfield became known as Apple Valley during the early part of the 20th century.

“Smithfield is in the apple-producing part of the state,” Zilka said, “so we thought it would be appropriate.”

In exchange for a steady labor force to rehabilitate the diner, the organization provides an ailing structure for the students to work on. In some cases, the organization also has some materials for the renovation, and in others, proceeds from the sale of New Hope Coffee available for purchase on the organization’s Web site go toward paying for diner restorations.

“It’s a great hands-on project,” said Joseph Giorno, a technology education teacher at Smithfield High. “It’s tough to teach something like electrical work on a board that’s 2 feet by 4 feet with a couple of wires. If you do it inside a building, in a site, they see how the wire works, how it’s done inside the building and how it works. It takes what they learned in class and applies it in the real world.”

The Smithfield teachers also saw other possibilities for cross-curriculum applications for the diner. The social studies and English departments see opportunities for research projects. The construction provides a real life lesson on angles and the geometry of cutting lumber for the mathematics department. The architecture department will design the renovations, while the furniture making and construction classes will actually perform the work.

The students would get an added bonus: a safety certification from the government that will allow them to perform construction work in any commercial building in the country. Students would receive the certification, from the Occupational Safety Hazard Administration, through a free class at the school, instruction that they would otherwise have to pay upward of $500 to complete, Giorno said.

Ideally, Zilka said, he’d like to see more of the vocational schools across the state involved in the New Hope Diner project. The renovated diners could be used as concession stands at schools, or be sold to restaurateurs to fill the void left by the diners of the past.

“[Before,] people would say ‘This is my diner,’ ” Zilka said. “You don’t hear people saying, ‘My favorite place to eat where I meet all my friends is the Dunkin’ Donuts.’ You hear people saying ‘I go to breakfast every morning with my friends at the Pawtucket Diner.’ ”

tbuford@projo.com