Team Building at ALA

Activity: Design IT Studios team building at Applied Learning Academy (ALA)

Date: Aug. 2006

Participants: ALA teens that were active in Design IT for a year.

Objective: In the beginning of the school year, Design IT Studios program would be active again at the middle school. One of our activities the coaches likes to redo is the Team Building Exercise. Throughout the whole year, the teens are broken into various groups. At times, these groups are not with there friends. This causes friction in the group, which may cause a creative working block. The Team Building Exercises helps the teen figure out how to work with each other by communicating their idea in a positive way to make it to there goal. They go through 3 to 4 different exercise by the end of the two day Team Building Cycle. In the picture above, the ALA teens are not allowed to place their foot on the grass and have to make it to a poll 20 feet away using 3 wooden planks. Other rules applied was that they were not allowed to make negative comments or they would have to start over.

Best part: When splitting the team up into their groups, being an observer, you can see the way the teens process the exercise and work their way through to their goal.

Worst part: Not being able to give your advice, even if they asked for help, they had to figure the exercise for themselves.