Week Two--Design Charrette

Today was really difficult to try to get anything achieved. We had a lack of interest to return to the design club the second week. There were only two kids that we worked with today and only one was a return. Despite the low number, the two boys that we worked with were very interested in being there and learning about the school design so it made it a little more enjoyable to work with them as opposed to the rowdy kids from the week before. We started off by doing one other icebreaker activity to get to know one another. Then since the architect was not able to be at both days of the after school Design Club, we talked about the set of plans for the new school with the kids ourselves. They seemed to be really interested in the design of the school and I think this is what got them to participate more than the previous week. We asked each of them to design their own part of the school. One kid wanted to design his own school entirely and the other was interested in giving his input on the outside spaces of the school. For the most part he described an interest for the same things that they did with the photo activity at the beginning of the process, but we were all surprised when he came up with a design to incorporate the skateboarders of the school into the activities of the surrounding area. I feel that we actually learned a lot from the two boys and hope that there are some improvements on the number of participants we get next week.
Brittany