make cool stuff

Hey gang. Been a while since I blogged, but since then many positive things have occured both with my gaggle group from ALA and the panther crew. To briefly summerize with highlights here and there, we started the month with the concept of making sure these kids gained the skills of provided power tools by utilizing a tool check-off card. Operation was a success. While at the museum panther kids became focused when provided with a goal. By the end of the week nobody was using drill bits to try to screw, trying to manually hold wood to cut, or stripping screw heads. It was obvious the confidence they gained in using the jig saw and sander as well. One rewarding moment included encouraging taylor to use them although she was terrified to do so, and fifteen minutes later was operating them by herself. For future improvements on the card, Jonathon and I would like to impliment a three-step learning system before checking each kid off for tool compitence called, "see one, do one, teach one." Basically they watch a tool being used properly by us, use it themselves under supervision, and finally teach another designit member what they learned. Couple more highlights with panther included playing with the gang on the museum school turtle while waiting to be picked up from the museum and gabe doing such a great job on continuing open studio on friday nights. Also I learned to go with the flow at open studio when one teen became disinterested in building and began crochaying. I decided to sit down next to her and have her become the teacher. We spent the next ten minutes laughing and chatting as she taught me to crochay, and in the meantime deepening our relationship. Another moment I felt to be the most inspiring was seeing one of my kids at CiCi's with his family over the weekend, and the next day he became comfortable enough to share personal hardships he was going through. I realized through time and trust we are building strong relationships with our kids as important as what we teach. Finally, the progress with the gaggle is going strong. I would have liked to impliment the cards in that group as well to focus thier skills, particularly so we know who is competent and who isn't for their sakes. However, it seems when it comes down to it they picked up on what they wanted to and focused on it quite well. I enjoyed working with one teen who was determined to build a working catapult. He actually went online, found an image, and is now in the process of successfully building an exact replica for his chain reaction component. I'm excited to see the final product of this cycle and I think our groups gained the skills we hoped them to.