The next week

Well maybe I should have kept my mouth shut but today when I showed up at Casey their were only two Casey students. Things have really started to go down hill and I hope that we can rebound from this some how. I asked my teacher how many kids showed up last Thursday and she told me that only two had shown up then too. Then I found out that early on Wednesday other students from our class had even shown up to do some recruiting but it not looking like it helped. I just don't get whats going on things weren't like this last year. There was only a day or two that we didn't have at least six Casey students. Maybe its just that last year was kinda more of a social thing and this year its been sort of like a class and the students aren't into it. It could be that we got such a late start since we started recruiting much early last year or that we had a classroom right next to the main entrance and kids would just pop in because it looked like fun. Either way, the only thing I can think of to spark things would be try targeting students that would like to do the Sketchup part of the design class but it might just be too late. To bad we can't just bribe them to come though I guess that would defeat the purpose of having a class that supposed to be based on participation. Well only time will tell, we will just have to wait to see what happens after break.

Ben

Boys will be boys

We started with two truths and a lie which went well and the kids seemed to enjoy until the boys started doing flips on the coach. This has seemed to be a common theme with these boys and I'm not sure if they really want to be here. Derek did a nice presentation for the kids and they seemed really interested and excited to see the new school that they aren't going to get to use. This was the only down part of showing them the new school is that they were bummed that they weren't going to be here. Some of them decided that they were going to flunk so they could prolong their time a Casey one more year. After looking at the design we let the students pick a part of the new school they wanted to help in the design. For the ones who were interested in designing this went great and they came up with some really good ideas. For the boys on the other hand they just weren't into it and it just getting hard to control them. Beside Spanish coming in handy to get them to settle down they just don't want to participate. I guess this is just the way things are and we will see what happens next week.

Ben

Pretty Bad Day At Casey

Today two Casey Middle School students showed up for our Design Club Meeting and I think it was pretty discouraging for all of us. We all showed up and a few students had tried to earlier in the day to recruit students from 7th and 8th grade. Unfortunately this did not seem to have any direct effect. The two boys were really excited to get going in the club however we couldn't really run the activity as planned due to the small numbers. We planned on having some kind of competition with the results of the Sustainability Scavenger Hunt, which turned out to be somewhat of an unsuccessful activity. The reason for this was because the results of different groups' findings could not be compared because there was only one group. I really hope that things in the Design Club will shape up when we get back from Spring Break. Hopefully the timing this week was the issue rather than the alternative reason for them not showing up, but it will be very disappointing if they have all lost interest before we get into the Sketch-Up design portion of the Club. After Spring Break we are really going to need more participation from these middle schoolers in order for our project to be successful.
-Brett

Casey Design Club: Week 3

Week three of the Casey Middle School after school program and things have turned an unfortunate corner it seems. While efforts were made earlier in the day to recruit kids for both the afternoon session as well as the Thursday class, there turned up only two participants. We had three people lead the two Casey students in the planned activity for the day, while the rest of us had a group discussion. Unfortunately, this was a bust for the week; however, I feel that it had a positive outcome, where various options were discussed for going forward from this point. Next week is a down week, which should give us all enough time to figure out what the next move is in this process. Upon our return, we should be able to gather the necessary amount of participants as the popular Google SkethUp will be utilized in the weeks to come.

-Ian

A Lackluster Turnout!

Thursday was certainly a strange twist from the previous week, considering our numbers went from seven to two. I think there were about ten of us from CU, including Debra, and this was obviously a failure of recruiting. Three students supposedly could not go because they were leaving soon, but our numbers should be sustainable enough that missing a couple kids occasionally basically devastates the day’s plans. I, like several others, ended up leaving early because having 5 times the number of CU people to Casey students would have been exceptionally overwhelming and not exactly useful. Hopefully this issue can be corrected this week, but I feel that we really need to work on recruiting because, as Debra said, it’s not worth all of our time if nobody is going to come to our Thursday meeting, and cutting out Thursday is not really an option (the two students who came can only come that day, and most of the CU students are limited to Thursday). This is a serious problem that can be rectified by merely bringing more students next time, which I believe is very doable. By following Debra’s suggestion of sending a few students to recruit during school on Wednesday morning, we could easily find a few students who might be willing to try it out after actually meeting someone and putting a face to the program. If not, we can certainly show up a little early Thursday and walk around for some “spot-recruiting” as we can. I certainly hope we can find a solution and make Thursday a productive and useful part of the Casey Design Club afterschool program.
-Austin

only 2 kids, 2 future architects

When we arrived at the school on Thursday we were all surprised to find there were only two kids who had returned from last week. There were four other boys who showed up, but said they were unable to participate in the program because of a basketball game. This story turned out to be a lie. It wasn’t because of a basketball game; they only came to play on the computer. We attempted to recruit a few kids from around the school. Unfortunately by that time the only kids who were still at school were already involved in a program of their own.
The two kids who stayed were great! They were so excited to be involved in the program. The planned activity was to show the kids the architect’s plans for the new school, and then have them design the outdoor areas based off of that information. One of the kids expressed he wanted to become an architect. He was so eager to design that he wasn’t even interested in seeing the architect’s plans. He wanted to design his own school, from scratch. Given that we only had two kids, today was surprisingly successful. I was glad that we were there for the boys who came. I believe they really enjoyed themselves, and learned a lot about design as well.


sam

Thursday the 13th

Not much to say about today because only two kids showed up! Actually Garfield (I changed his name for security purposes, clever name I think) was on of the students that stayed on thursday. We split up into two groups, almost all the CU students left and we because to draw on trace over the plans from the architects. Garfield decided he wanted to design his own school so we help encourage his thoughts to encompass many forms of sustainable design. He enjoyed the activity and was so involved that his mom, who was waiting for him for 30 min had to come up and get him. It was really cool to see how supportive she was in her son's architectural and design passion. Hopefully we can recruit more people in to the club next week!

Steinmark

Thursday's First

The first day with the students was not what I was expecting at all. Only seven students showed up and there were even more CU students. The events kinda felt put together at the last minute so I think we should do a little bit more preparation on our part. The boys in the design club were more focused on the games on their computer. However, once we split them up on different sides of the computer lab, and even the library, they settled down for some ecological learning. The girls on thursday, like usual, were on task and enjoyed the activities (at least from my perspective.)

Steinmark

Productive Week 2

Wednesday March 12 was a much more productive and focused day than our first week of the after school design club. The day started off with the icebreaker activity and similarly to last week had a slightly goofy feel to it. Many of the boys were trying to be silly and mess around like last week. They were misbehaving until Luis told them in Spanish to behave. The architect’s arrival helped shift the mood of the group. Derek is the name of the architect for the future Casey Middle and his mannerisms seemed to shift the focus to a much more intelligent and focused manner. The 6th graders seemed interested by the Sketch-Up models of the proposal for the new building. Some of them were so excited about the building where they will never go to school that they suggested that they wanted to fail and stay back a grade in order to experience going to the new school. The next part of the design club was a fun activity where the Casey students worked with CU students to design a portion of the school on trace over the actual plan for the new building. I had the opportunity to work with Victor on his ideas for the green roof and he came up with some valuable ideas about the layout and his intensions for the use of the space. Overall I think that the tempo of the group is building momentum and definitely improved from last week.
-Brett