Solving Real-World Problems in High School Engineering

I grew up in a small town. I’m raising my children in that same small town (I know. Sounds like a John Mellencamp song). While I love small towns for many reasons, I do get a bit envious of the learning opportunities that bigger districts can provide. One of my favorite districts to work with is Crowley ISD in Crowley, Texas. They have a CTE center there that boasts of some of the best teachers I’ve ever met. For many of them, teaching is a second career after leaving the military, law enforcement, or some aspect of the business world. I’ve written about some of them in the past. I got to hang out with them again this week, and they brought their A game just like they always do.

The class I observed taught by Mr. P was Principles of Engineering. When I visited, the students were already a week into their projects, and on day four of the collaborative design phase. Their purpose of the project was to design, create, test, and evaluate a compound machine while collaborating effectively with others in a design team. I love this sentence from the lesson plan Mr. P shared with me prior to my visit, “There is no one lesson or objective today as students will be directing me to assist with whatever “step” they have achieved.” Doesn’t that statement get right to the heart of student-driven learning? The students were all designing, building a model of, and then completing a CAD of a machine that could remove the hardtop cover of a Jeep. They had an authentic problem to solve. Before my visit, the students had already sketched their designs on grid paper. They were all in the model-building phase, choosing from a variety of materials (i.e. Fischer Technik, Legos, or VEX components). While circulating among groups, Mr. P saw a common issue that needed to be addressed. He was able to pull them back together as a whole class to demonstrate how to draw a gear on Autodesk CAD design software. The students would watch him draw a step, and then they would do the same on their own computers. This was a step they would all be taking next in their projects as they all incorporated some type of gear into their machines.

At the conclusion of the project, students will write a reflection piece about themselves, as well as evaluate their peers as part of the collaboration process. The groups will vote on the best design to then build to scale and test on a real Jeep. Doesn’t get more real-world than this, right? 

If you like these practical examples of real teachers facilitating student-driven learning, stay tuned. I’ll be sharing more stories from Crowley ISD soon.