Casey Design Club: Week 2

The second week at Casey Middle School for the design club (after school program) went fairly well, I think, in multiple regards. We started the class, more or less, with an introductory presentation from one of the architects working to design and build the new Casey. This seemed to really take hold of the student's attention, as many of the Casey participants couldn't help but ask questions about the new school. I found it interesting when the students realized for themselves that their little brothers and sisters were going to be coming to the new Casey, and some of them even wanted to stay an extra year to see it after it was built. After the architect had presented his overview of the new site and building, we went into a design charrette, in which the Casey students were able to design any aspect of the new building that they wanted, which I thought beneficial to them as they were able to use their design skills and think about what they wanted or thought necessary at Casey. Overall, I felt like the second day at the design club went over ALOT better than day one, and look forward to next week when the kids will be able to learn more on sustainability, which is the end goal of the program.

-Ian

Design Club: Day 2

The second day at Casey was a flop. Wednesday everything seemed to work out well, however on Thursday only two kids showed up. The icebreaker game two truths and a lie went really well and I think the kids enjoyed it. It would have been a little overwhelming for the Casey students to work with so many CU students, so many of us left after the icebreaker. Hopefully next thursday will have a better turn out, if not we may have to figure out how this can work for the rest of the semester.

-Kaley

The second session of the after school program went quite well, with the Casey students showing a great amount of interest in the designer's presentation and in the following design project. The ice-breaker of two truths and a lie seemed to draw most of the students attention towards the larger group and provided a way for us to get to know a bit more about each other. A few of the student’s attention were lost afterwards due to the delay before the architect's presentation, but that should be expected with sixth grade students. The plans provided by the architect of the future Casey school greatly interested the students, initiating many questions and concerns about the new design and what specific elements will be included. The 3-D model of the design of the school also generated questions from the students, particularly about the gym, the outdoor lunch area, the cafeteria, and especially about the addition of an elevator. The architect could have answered the students in greater detail with more interest, but he did provide the students with a better idea of how the new school will turn out. Overall, the day was a success and I hope the students will bring the same amount of interest, concern and new ideas to each session.

A Disappointing Day

Today was an extremely disappointing day for Design Club in many aspects. I had heard and seen good reviews of the Wednesday session of Design Club, so I had planned on the Thursday session going well. However only two kids showed up, and while these two individuals seemed extremely enthusiastic about participating in Design Club, the sheer lack of students in attendance was disappointing. I even ended up leaving, with quite a few other students because having too many CU students present would have been overwhelming and a waste of time. However, one positive thing that I noticed was that the two truths and a lie icebreaker game had an encouraging result. Though there were only the two Casey students and about twelve CU students, I felt that those two students seemed genuinely interested in hearing our stories, and vice versa. In the same respect, though I tend to approach "icebreakers" with trepidation, I felt that this one gave even the CU students an insight into their peers, whereas in the past couple weeks I have felt that I did not know much about any of my classmates.


alyssa lile

They're back!

Being the second meeting of our after school program, much of the nervousness was gone from the air. The kids were seemingly excited to be there (or at least out of CSAPs), and we even gained one more girl in our group. Today the architect came, and the kids were extremely excited to see the plans for the new school. However, there was a minor problem that came from such an impressive new school: “I want to fail and get held back a year so I can go to the new school,” one of the boys proclaimed. Of coarse he was joking (I hope), but nonetheless it emphasized how crucial it is for us to make alternative incentives for the kids to participate, despite the fact that they will not be attending the new school. For example, most of the children have younger siblings who will be attending Casey. Perhaps this will be a good talking point to keep our 6th graders eager to participate in the Design Club, for the sake of their siblings. (Jon Bortles 3/14/08)

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

Familiar Faces

This was actually the first day of our after school program and I have to admit that I was quite surprised when I walked in. It turned out that almost all the students were ones who had participated in last years design club. This left me with a reassuring feeling that what we had started last year had stuck with the students, they had enjoyed working with us, and come back for another semester. This also helped create a more comfortable atmosphere for a first day meeting since I knew most of the students and they knew me. What is even funnier is that out of the three students that weren't in the program last year two of them had been in my group the week prior. We started with the "name game" you know where you pick a word which is associated with the first letter of your name. I think that the kids really enjoyed the activity and whats funny is that middle-schoolers had a better memory then the college students. In fact they had to help us out which turned this into a really great participation activity for the kids. Next we headed to the computer lab to do a carbon footprint calculator. I think that this was a great place to start with teaching the students about ecological concepts and really got them thinking about how significant their footprint is compared to other countries. The student that I worked with wanted to go through and see what the difference was when we picked the best options and worsted and he even knew what had a negative or positive effect on the footprint which was great. When we finished the carbon footprint calculators we asked the kids some question about what they thought, one of the girls commented on how ambiguous the question were and next time she would want to do one which was a little more detailed so this was great to hear from someone so young. Of course some students didn't get as involved with the calculators and were more interested in the daily game that they had pirated on to the computers but overall this was a good first day and got the ecological ball rolling.

Ben

First Design Club

For our first session of Design Club at Casey I attended the Thursday session. Unfortunately, I felt that it did not go as smoothly as we all may have hoped, due to the fact that most of the boys were uninterested in participating in any of the activities we had set up, but rather they were interested in playing games on the computer and not really listening to what we had to say. I definitely felt that we were not engaging these kids in the activities like we'd planned. However, there were a few encouraging aspects of the Thursday session, including the two girls who seemed genuinely interested in learning about design, and specifically one boy's (the one I worked with individually) participation. Though he seemed sort of uninterested in the activities, he had a lot of previous knowledge about sustainable planning strategies and green design. Also, even though he wasn't fully engaged in the activities we were working on, he continued to work with me and assured me that he was coming back the next week. Overall, I think that there is much room for improvement in the areas of finding ways to keep kids interested and engaged, and also maybe recruiting more members.

alyssa

Week One: Casey Design Club

Wednesday was my first design club session with the Casey Middle School students. When we showed up at the school, it was a little chaotic trying to figure out which computer lab we were going to be using, but in the end it all managed to work out. We played an ice-breaker game at the beginning of the session to get to know the kids, however, they lost focus near the end as we had to wrap things up and move on to the lab. For week one, we had planned on using the Carbon Footprint calculator to help show the students both what their ecological footprint was on the earth, as well as compare that to the rest of the world. I think it was very informative for the students, as most of them asked questions throughout the website program. In addition, I felt that the student's enjoyed being able to see what countries such as Canada and the US were rated as far as an average on their footprints. I look forward to next week's session with hopes that a few more students will be coming to attend.

-Ian