Brainstorming some Improvements
I've been thoroughly unable to write down my thoughts about the 3rd, 4th, and now 5th Cardboard Club Meetings for weeks now. Whether other things came up, or I sat down to write, only to meet frozen fingers, nothing has been typed until now. I'm almost happy I waited (even though it's been driving me insane) because now I have plenty to talk about.
Cubes and Crayons
Trying to teach 8-14 year-olds geometry is HARD. The Cubes and Crayons workshop increased my respect for math teachers SO much. It was just… difficult to get boys excited about the 11 different nets for a cube. I brought in some foldable cardboard nets that they enjoyed interacting with, but then asked them to think beyond their years, and come up with the remaining 6 unique geometric nets. They couldn't. To be fair, I don't even think I could have either.
This is why teachers start with the easy stuff. As I found through that workshop, the ordering of information needs to make sense. I messed it up a second time by throwing in 20 minutes of "How to fold a zine" which, looking back, didn't make sense to be included in the context of the workshop AT ALL. After that, I threw another impossible challenge at them, trying to get teams of two to have one person describing a 3D shape, and another building it. While some of these shapes I hadn't even talked about yet…
If I write any more about the Cubes and Crayons workshop, I think I'll start breaking things. It's fair to say I, the teacher, learned far more from that meeting than the members did. It was poorly structured on my part due to not assessing and properly adapting to their current skill levels. I threw too much at them, so it bounced back and smacked me upside the head. Hence my delay in writing about it. I was hoping the gut feeling of disgust at my idiocy would dissipate, but alas… it definitely didn't.
Brainstorming
The 4th meeting went a bit better. This time I showed them a bunch of fancy pencils and erasers, had a massive paper covering the table that they could doodle on, and then an acronym to explain.
It wasn't overly-complicated like the Cubes and Crayons meeting.
I'm actually quite fond of my "YOU PLAN" acronym for Brainstorming. It seems quite nifty in explaining the eventually subconscious steps you should take when developing a larger idea.
I explain it decently well on the handout [attached] but the idea is: you recognize your own ideas, other ideas, and then really understand what your goal is; then you prototype and learn from the prototype, adjusting it and defining your next steps with the project.
The kids didn't even know what an acronym was. So I again overestimated their level–but this time it was quickly explainable. There were reference points and business' acronyms they knew to compare it to.
Then I had them try to apply the acronym, and it went alright. One guy brainstormed a tower project, one brainstormed a miniature chair gallery show, and another brainstormed a tshirt (which got surprisingly complicated!) It was a smaller group, but that allowed for a lot of one-on-one dialogue, which is certainly helpful in learning something cognitive like acronym application.
More TShirts
Cardboard Club is idealized to be this group of kids who can learn and grow together to create awesome things out of cardboard that do more than look cool. They are supposed to learn character growth and teamwork principles that they can apply to other areas of their life. They are supposed to create things that will benefit more than just themselves, and may better their community. Cardboard Club is meant to be bigger than a once-a-week class.
So of course we need tshirts.
To tackle this necessity, for the fifth meeting I brought in my Cricut and Laptop, alongside some larger sheets of cardboard and some pencils. Members were traced onto the cardboard, and then cut out model shirts and drew up some designs. Then using the designs I showed them how to create them on Cricut Design Space, then sent a couple to be cut out of paper so they could see it in action. I promised that their designs would be made a reality by their next meeting, so they can wear them for a photoshoot.
The shirts will be cool. I got over the failure of the geometry lesson. Hopefully kids will stop getting sick, going on vacations, and joining rugby teams because I want them at my cardboard club meetings.
All is well.
On another note, I used pliers to eat Chickfila recently, and it's got me thinking about improvements. (just kidding- literally anything else has prompted me to think of improvements)
Even thinking of improvements has me thinking of how to improve thinking of improvements, because if you focus on it too much, you won't acknowledge the improvements you have made, and then you'll burn out. I don't want to burn out.
The end of the semester in college is a lot, but it's manageable. Using tools like lists and calendars and actually staying on task can make it a breeze. But slack on those lists and that calendar for even a little bit, and you've lost optimization. But don't take it too far, because not scheduling breaks will tire yourself out before even half of the list is done (learned that the hard way). You can't go all-in, one-track-minded, on the concept of "consistency". The entire point is that it's an ongoing, never-ending path (called life). To maintain that analogy, there are stumbles along the way–sticks you absolutely HAVE to pick up and those few that actually have poison ivy on them–and there will be glorious sights to see. "Improvement" is therefore not always picking up the pace and doing things faster (because then you're more likely to stumble AND miss the glorious sights) but it is instead to pace yourself, and enjoy everything along the way.
A mentor of mine told me recently that he had experiences of a lifetime in his twenties before he got married, and he rightfully misses them. But he won't ever remember them as fondly as he recalls his daughter doing something stupid and all the time they "waste" together because now he consciously enjoys the time. His 20s were impressive, but he was always "looking towards the next big thing" and never stopping to enjoy it. Unsurprisingly, he told me to "enjoy the moments as they happen."
Because no moment happens twice.
