Learning beyond the classroom at King Middle School's makerspace

Photo / James McCarthy Students at King Middle School in Portland build a model wind turbine.

Photo / James McCarthy Gus Goodwin, a technology teacher at King Middle School in Portland, shows 8th-graders Diana Aboda and Lillian Gates how to determine where 45-degree cuts will have to be made on the floating platform they’re making for their wind turbine.

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By James McCarthy

At mid-morning, the 8th-grade classroom of King Middle School technology teacher Gus Goodwin is abuzz with all the hands-on learning that's going on. Several students using hand saws take turns cutting thin strips of pine into carefully measured lengths. Others line up to use an upright band-saw under Goodwin's watchful guidance, creating mitered 45-degree corners on their strips of wood. At another worktable, a determined-looking student patiently uses a hammer and chisel to cut a groove into a somewhat resistant piece of wood.

There's not a bored student in the bunch.

In teams of three, Goodwin's students are drafting, measuring, cutting and conferring with each other as they design and build floating wooden platforms for wind turbines they'll be making out of PVC pipes and other materials available in the tech-ed classroom. It's a whirlwind of activity, with Goodwin the calm eye of it — coaching, questioning, demonstrating and, more often than not, just observing with the hint of a smile as the teams slowly assemble their uniquely designed floating platforms.

“In three weeks we're going to be in Orono testing these models at the University of Maine's wind-wave simulator,” he says, explaining during a lunch break the urgency evident during that morning's classes. “We'll be here until midnight some nights, if that's what it takes to get them done.”

What's happening in Goodwin's classroom reflects a convergence of several important education trends that are based on the realization that teaching the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math benefits greatly when academic learning is combined with hands-on challenges requiring real world solutions. It goes well beyond what used to be called “shop class,” incorporating the multidisciplinary project-based approach of what's called “expeditionary learning” with the more recent “Makerspace” movement that encourages students to create, invent, tinker, explore and discover using a variety of tools and materials.

“Gus is a very unique teacher who's been doing very good hands-on learning with his students for many years,” says Tom Keller, executive director of the Maine STEM Council, which was created by the Legislature in 2011 to identify ways of improving STEM achievement and interest among Maine students so that they will have the skills they'll need to be gainfully employed at Maine businesses competing in a global economy.

“The challenge of teaching science, technology, engineering and math is how to make it relevant to students' lives,” Keller adds, noting that the goal goes beyond simply improving test scores. “It's a lot more about identifying a problem, thinking creatively, working with a team and communicating with others what you've learned.”

Don't call it 'shop class'

Goodwin has been teaching for 22 years, following stints in the U.S. Air Force and at L.L.Bean. He says there's a big difference between the traditional shop class assignment and the floating wind turbine platforms his students are creating.

“If this was a shop class, I'd say, 'Here's your model and all the tools and materials you'll need: Now make one that looks just like it,'” he says. “Today, your students are learning how to use all the tools safely just as they would have in the 1970s, but I expect and encourage every project to be different. They're doing a lot of trial and error, testing out their designs, seeing what works and what doesn't.”

Another difference, he says, is the way he coordinates his students' expeditionary learning projects with the curriculum of 8th-grade science teacher Peter Hill. The current wind power project, for example, was preceded by discussions in Hill's classroom about “pitch, roll and yaw” and the challenge of maintaining a towering wind turbine's balance point in an ever-changing ocean environment.

In a separate project, students learned about buoyancy and propulsion before setting out to build submersible robots for the regional SeaPerch Challenge competition with other New England schools. King Middle School's team qualified for the nationals and is now raising money to compete with 175 schools in the event that will be held May 20-21 in Baton Rouge, La.

“I don't expect every kid who comes into this class to go off and become an engineer when they become an adult,” Goodwin says. “At the same time, if kids don't get to have experiences where they can build something, make mistakes and fix them, they might not ever know that jobs exist in which creativity and problem-solving are all essential skills that they need to have.”

Josh Plourde, communications manager and IT coordinator at the University of Maine's Advanced Structures and Composites Center in Orono, reinforced that focus on relevance by telling Goodwin's students about UMaine's new Harold Alfond W2 Ocean Engineering Laboratory that's capable of simulating wind and wave conditions at 1:50 scale equal to the worst storms at sea. He told them about the upcoming Maine Windstorm and Wind Blade Challenge competitions that UMaine is hosting on May 20 in partnership with the Maine Composites Alliance and Maine Ocean and Wind Industry Initiative. More than 40 Maine high school teams are competing.

Although the competition isn't set up for middle school students, Plourde says he invited them to attend the event any way for the opportunity to informally test some of their floating wind turbine platforms in the wind and wave facility and see first-hand how older high school students tackled the same problems. Goodwin says upwards of 90 students are signed up for the field trip.

“For many of the students at Gus's school, this will be the first time they'll get to perform in an active research lab,” Plourde says. “We hope it will inspire them.”

Nancy Berrang, community coordinator at King Middle School, says the school's hands-on problem-solving approach to learning has changed more than one student's outlook about the STEM disciplines. “The idea 'I can do that' is something that has to be cultivated at a young age,” she says. “They have the capability, but for some of them, they just don't know it yet.”

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