Kids become builders, engineers in MakerSpace program in Manhattan Beach

Students in Room 37 of Pacific Elementary in early June, co-designing a shelter out of newspapers and tape as part of the MakerSpace program. Photos

The project site was crowded and a bit noisy, with frequent shrieks filling the air coming from a crew of about twenty rough and tumble workers who showed up early on a Friday morning brimming with energy for the task at hand. They had come to build.

Some had circled this day on their calendars; many kept asking their mothers when the day would finally arrive. Within in an hour, a small village of utterly unique structures populated Room 37 at Pacific Elementary School in Manhattan Beach. The workers, kindergarten teacher Sondra Abram’s class, had used only two materials —  rolled up newspapers and masking tape —  to construct a roomful of joyfully sprawling little dwellings. One of them had a jagged collection of rolled-up paper beams pointed skyward, a bit like a rocket launcher —  this was an idea of a little boy —  but purely decorative. A pair of little girls worked assiduously below that protrusion, making sure the underlying structure was sound.

“Don’t step on it!” a little girl warned.

Overseeing the whole operation was Cathy Hobart, a parent volunteer who has over the last five years played a key role in growing the district’s MakerSpace program from a single day a week at Pacific to four days a week at all five elementary schools in the district. Over these years, Hobart has been the program’s fairy godmother, overseeing a dizzying array of projects in Room 37 —  bridges, buildings, little roller coasters for marbles, leprechaun traps, happy habitats for animals, ping pong ball launchers, and a few hundred more —  but always doing so at an important remove.

“The kids are in charge,” she said. “They work together. They figure it out.”

Hobart, teachers, and other parent volunteers set the stage for each MakerSpace project, many which are timed to coincide with other aspects of curriculum being taught. Hobart has become particularly expert at finding materials, such as corks donated by Barsha Wines, or mechanical clasps given by Body Glove; drawers and boxes line the walls of Room 37 full of everything from circuit boards and tools to pulleys, tubes, and pipe cleaners. In addition to providing the raw materials for every MakerSpace project, the fact that most the materials are discards provides an underlying lesson to students.

“We can re-use almost everything,” Hobart said. “Kids start seeing things that would otherwise be trash as building blocks.”

Makerspace has made such an impact —  in its alignment with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), effectiveness in getting students excited about science, and popularity among parents —  that next year the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation is providing a $150,000 grant to expand the program. The grants will fund MakerSpace assistants who will manage the program and its implementation throughout the district.

This means Hobart will be happily without a job, other than to consult, as MakerSpace gets folded into the district’s STEM/STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math)  curriculum. She has been the essential driving force behind the program’s success in the school district. As Pacific Principal Rhonda Steinberg, who frequently writes poems about all manner of school topics, wrote in an ode to Hobart and MakerSpace, “It started as a small lunch program just one day a week/Then moved to 4 days at lunch and an after school tweak/She creates and inspires every project with such Tender Loving Care/TK through third grade come every other week and think she lives there/Fourth and fifth grade have also benefited from the space/Coding robots, doing challenges and a roller coaster race/Cutting, gluing, pasting, collecting, inspiring and much more/Coding, Osmos, teaching Dash and Dot and experimenting galore/Her legacy will live on at all elementary schools in MBUSD/Thanks to Cathy’s passion, Pacific is clearly the best that one could be.”

Students form teams and learn to collaborate in designing and Makerspace projects.

MBEF executive director Farnaz Golshani said that the decision to fund the program grew out of parent and teacher surveys that prioritized STEM/STEAM education and budget workshops in March that specifically advocated growing MakerSpace.

“ It’s really an opportunity for kids to explore engineering and science in a more hands-on model,” Golshani said. “So it’s sort of a creative space where they are given a problem they are supposed to solve — say, make a bridge that can handle this weight. It’s been amazing. Right now, our MakerSpace program has constantly been visited by other districts that are in the process of creating it. But it’s a beautiful program…Kids just light up when they get to do hands on learning and do things in a relevant way.”

Hobart came to the program without a science background. Her son, Jack, was in second grade, and she’d already been involved in the PTA when some other parents suggested she lead the program at Pacific. Over the years, she has seen firsthand how MakerSpace impacts kids by the way it has changed her son. For example, just last month, Jack, just finishing 7th grade, had a friend who had a fast-running remote control car. The problem was every time it hit a bump in the street, the car’s battery pack would fly out. Jack went home and designed an apparatus to better secure the battery, then made it on his 3-D printer.

“He sees the world differently,” Hobart said. “He can see a problem and try to fix it and solve it. And I like him learning how to use different tools….His head is practically inside of [the 3-D printer] because he’s fascinated with watching it print, and the process of it. I don’t even know how to use it.”

MakerSpace isn’t just about making things, but also understanding larger problems, and trying to build bigger solutions. An example was the task kids were given to create “a happy town” —  essentially an exercise in city planning.

“We broke it down into different compartments, like community events,” Hobart said.  “Another was a pedestrian kind of thing, like, ‘How do you get around your town? Could you create a happier, more friendly way for how to do that?’ It’s not easy, right? So we had some areas where cars were not allowed to go, it was going to be for bikes and pedestrians to go. We talked about it first, but they had to plan it.”

“They are going to be problem solvers, so we better get them thinking now,” Hobart added. “They have some really good ideas.”

Cathy Hobart with kindergartners at Pacific Elementary doing a MakerSpace project. Photo

Kindergarten teacher Emily Sanders said the program impacts students’ work habits and gives them tenacity when approaching other school subjects. Things that don’t work the first time —  the basis of the scientific method, really —  can be improved if they don’t get frustrated.

“I have noticed that fewer students are upset over mistakes, and they now use the word, ‘failure’ in a positive sense,” Sanders said. “When something doesn’t work, it means you have to keep going until you find a solution.  I’m noticing that the students are transferring this skill to their writing, reading, and math activities. They are learning to embrace the ‘growth mindset,’ which means every failure and mistake is a learning opportunity.”

The students, Sanders said, have also embraced working collaboratively. “They are learning that it is valuable to listen to each other’s ideas, and are learning to disagree politely,”  she said.

Superintendent Mike Matthews, who noted that grants from the Manhattan Beach Rotary and Chevron helped get Makerspace up and running, said the program’s expansion fits perfectly with the evolving, more hands-on manner of learning educators now know works best in science education.

“It’s all about students doing science,” he said. “One of the slogans is, ‘Lab, then blab.’ In other words, less teacher talk, way more students doing science. MakerSpace is the perfect embodiment of that, and NGSS standards are all about that. It’s students being creative, it’s students designing solutions, and it’s student-led. So it’s not one answer; it’s many answers.”

Matthews said that NGSS standards are still relatively new but MakerSpace has given the district a jumpstart.

“Cathy has started this very well,” he said. “If we do this right, MakerSpace can be totally integrated with science curriculum. So it really fits perfectly into the schools.”

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