Local high school students have not only fostered engineering clubs at elementary schools, they’ve won an award for the work they’ve created.
For the past three years, students from Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) have helped set up and monitor engineering clubs at Island elementary schools. According to an article posted on the MVRHS website, the students launched their project at the Tisbury School, then expanded to all five elementary schools this past year, with nearly 100 elementary students participating.
High school students, led by faculty Natalie Munn, Anna Cotton, and Dana Munn, did all of the organizing and volunteer recruitment — ultimately a team of 35 students operated the elementary school clubs through the high school’s MVironment Club. The leadership and design team created activities to run four times weekly at each school, contacted teachers, prepared materials, and arranged for groups of 5 – 10 high school students to work with each club at each school.
All activities had an “energy” theme. This year the teams led third and fourth graders in making pinwheels, a grabber, a musical instrument ,and an LED flashlight.
High school project leaders Zachary Bresnick and Casey McAndrews, the project leaders, created a portfolio of the project and entered it for consideration for a National Energy Education (NEED) Project’s Youth Leadership Award.
Just last Friday, the group found out by email that they had been chosen as the Massachusetts Senior Level School of the Year, the top honor for high schools in the state among NEED Project participants. They hope to attend the NEED Energy Conference and Awards Ceremony at the end of June in Washington, D.C.