This week, I had the opportunity to travel to Kittery, Maine and expand Geared Up to Shapleigh Middle School, and it was great!
What I didn’t realize before I got there, though, was how different Kittery and Dallas are! It was freezing, the town was small, and the city was just very different overall, but it was really cool experiencing the New England lifestyle for a little while!
My day at Shapleigh started off with an introduction to engineering, and our first design challenge, We Will Rebuild. There were no pictures from this challenge because we were just having too much fun! Fun fact: my students at Shapleigh were all girls, and they were all in 7th grade. This was a different group from what I’d done in the last few schools, but it was a great group! The last time I had an all girl group was during my first run of Geared Up at Irma Rangel Young Women’s Leadership School in Dallas, so I was excited to !
Next, we learned all about civil engineering. We talked about how civil engineers would be able to build a bridge from Dallas to Kittery, and ended with our design challenge, Loadrunner!
After Loadrunner, we moved on to learn about industrial engineering and did design challenge #3: Marshmallowpocalypse!
After launching our marshmallows, we learned about mechanical engineering, and did design challenge #4, Roller Coaster Ride! This challenge takes a little bit longer, but it’s very fun, and the limitations I added were a fun twist!
After the 4th design challenge, it was time for our final challenge for the day, Squishy Circuits! We built circuits to light up LEDs, and the girls had a great time!
Working at Shapleigh Middle School was a great experience, and I’m glad I had the opportunity!
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