Every Tuesday and Thursday morning, from 7:30am to 8:15ish, High Tech High Mesa (HTHM) staff gather for a staff meeting. In one of the recent meetings, a group of 12th grade students from Team Zanana came, and delivered a presentation on "Accessibility in The Classroom." This group of students educated teachers how current classrooms could be improved and how teachers could make that possible. In my past experiences of staff meetings at school or any education-related meetings, I've never had students in the space. I was fascinated by the project and their presentation, but I was also fascinated by the presence of students in the staff meetingーthe impact of having students voice and learning from them within staff meeting. I was fortunate to be able to interview another group from Team Zanana's Project Empower. This group of students worked on "Adaptive Athletics." Please listen to what they said. What was the project about? Why this topic of athletics? Listen here. Transcript: "Our project was started off by seeing how disability was represented in our community and after looking at that, we wanted to see how we could improve inclusion of all individuals. So we looked at Universal Design-how that is not only inclusive to people with disabilities but improves lives for everyone as well." "We also looked at High Tech High (HTH) specifically and we wanted to see how our sports are inclusive. So we looked at how HTH is allowing people with disabilities to be on our sports programs. And we found that...YES, we do allow our programs to be in our sports programs, but it's not openly offered to them. If you have a disability, you have to specifically speak to athletic directors or find coaches that might accommodate to. So it's not the easiest process and HTH could be doing better." Why this topic of athletics? Listen here. Transcript: "I, myself, am in a wheelchair. I did athletics through school but I always had to advocate myselfーask this and that I didn't have a lot of choice so I had to coach myself and I had to go through this entire process with the track team and the surf team and really like being the student body getting bigger and there is more diverse representations of abilities, now that I am a senior, it would be good for me and school that...I wanna show school that this is available and that they can be a pioneer school of adaptive athletics in high school because that is not really done. So I feel like that a need had to be filled so we're just gonna be bringing light to that." In order to "bring light" to the need, this group of students made 2 infographics that inform people of adaptive athletics history, current representation, and programs. They also created a 3D printed water bottle holder and a 3D printed backpack hook for wheelchairs. Hands on and minds on. The whole process was based on 1) Engineering Design Process, 2) students' interests and passion, and 3) community partnership. Students made a product as a solution to a problem they found by reaching out to and seeking support from a wide variety of community partners. What a strong, authentic project design that is so grounded.
I highly recommend taking a look at the website that Team Zanana created. The light that each team brought to the needs will inspire any educators or students like it did for meーit empowers us to pause and think, "To what needs shall we be bringing light? How can we do that together?" Visit Project Empower Website: https://projectempowerhthm.org *You can learn more about project description, resources, products that students made in this project. There is also an "accessibility menu" as well.
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AuthorKana will share with you her learning experiences and her journey at High Tech High Graduate School of Education (M.Ed. in Education Leadership) and High Tech High Mesa. Archives
December 2021
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