Few things sound more terrifying to me than being a first year teacher and stepping in front of a class of teenagers with an expectation of helping them learn. I don’t care who you are, how old you are, or where you come from, being on the receiving end of the withering stare of a teenager is a decidedly unpleasant experience. But this was exactly the crucible that new high school industrial technology teacher Brian Zweerink walked into after a mid-life change of careers, and he shared this story with Make.
Zweerink was already a successful designer of industrial equipment when he decided to take on the difficult and often thankless role of high school teacher. Of course, he tried to come into class as prepared as he could, with many books about education and authentic instruction read and taken to heart. All of his reading gave him the sad – and often accurate – image of a classroom devoid of creativity with grades being based entirely on worksheets, tests, and the memorization of context-less facts. He made a commitment to himself to be different and bring with him the willingness to let his students make mistakes, while helping them learn lessons from their failures.
The Computer Aided Drafting classroom that Zweerink was to inherit happened to have a 3D printer, so he decided to draw on his past experience with radio-controlled cars and assign his students an ongoing project devoted to constructing some. The students would break up into teams, build a group-designed car and, after the project was complete, they would race them and see who came out on top. Of course, high schoolers being high schoolers, things didn’t exactly go according to plan.
“One of the first realizations that I had was that high schoolers are mostly motivated by not working. Left to their own devices (pun intended), the vast majority will look at the internet given the option between that and any other thing that’s allowed in the classroom. Task avoidance is so ingrained by high school that they will avoid things they would otherwise pay to do strictly out of habit,” explained Zweerink in his article on Make. “The takeaway from this is that the beginning of this lesson needs a sub-goal; a way of having a quick payoff for effort that is near-term and achievable. Additionally, even though the overall project is very open-ended, high school students need structure in terms of time management, file management, materials organization, and teamwork.”
But just like the mistakes that he wanted to allow his students to experience, Zweerink learned from his. While he stumbled out of the gate, he managed to get his class on board with his project and steer them to completion. And he’s returning to class next year with a new plan built from his experiences with his first year and an altered game plan for his RC car project. Not only does he detail his ups and downs while working with his students on the project, but he includes the details of the class plan, including rules and a supply list, so his fellow educators can try their hands at it. Think of it as open source education.
I encourage anyone, not just educators, to read the entire article because it is a perfect example why teaching “Making” in schools is so important. The philosophy of being a Maker always seemed to me to value mistakes and errors, not to just try your best to avoid them. Not because the goal was to fail, but because the goal was to learn. And more often than not, far more important lessons are learned from the things that went wrong than the things that went right. So, when Zweerink’s new class starts their project, he already knows what to avoid, giving him the freedom to try something else. And I think that’s the point of being a Maker.
Incidentally, at the end of the project, when his students had their RC car race Zweerink entered a car of his own design into the competition. He lost. But of course that meant that his students won. And I know that’s the point of being a teacher.
