What do you get when you combine duct tape, cardboard, and the creative problem solving capabilities of Hillbrook 7th and 8th graders? A lively and long-standing tradition that found most of the school pool-side yesterday afternoon, cheering, shouting, laughing, and taking advantage of a little cool water on another blistering hot day.
The annual Hillbrook Regatta, now in its 14th year, beautifully captures the innovative spirit and enthusiastic energy of our community. Teams of 7th and 8th graders work together using only cardboard and duct tape to build boats that meet several seemingly simple—yet sometimes difficult to achieve—criteria:
1. The boat needs to float with one person inside of it.
2. The boat needs to stay afloat as the student uses their arms to paddle the boat across the pool
3. The boat needs to stay intact from one round to the next, meaning that a boat that qualifies for the finals needs to be sturdy enough to avoid water damage so that it can compete a second time.
Each year we see the emergence of new concepts. For example, one of the top three boats this year, which was created by the team calling itself “Mr. Squiggles”, was significantly longer than the other boats, clearly an effort to use design to shorten the time necessary to cross the pool. As another example, we have seen a variety of cardboard paddles placed on student’s hands during the last few years, with differing levels of effectiveness. This year, it appeared that some of the paddles fell off before the boats made it across the pool, although it was also worth noting that the top two finishers both used paddles. It will be interesting to see how that impacts design plans for next year.
While the 7th and 8th graders battled it out in the pool, our 5th graders were doing final preparations for this weekend’s Maker’s Faire in San Mateo. Billed as the Greatest Show (and tell) on Earth, the Maker Faire is “a family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement.” Our 5th graders have been hard at work for months building pinball machines to display at this weekend’s event. Through the creation of these machines, students have practiced their building skills, iterated different components on the 3-d printer, explored and played with electronics, and experienced numerous failures—and successes—enroute to building a working machine.
Hillbrook’s commitment to making and tinkering runs deep—walk through the Village of Friendly Relations and you are transported back to the school’s early years when our original students designed, financed, and built these delightful structures. Throughout the year and around the campus you see evidence of innovative and engaging projects that challenge students to solve problems and to become creators. Building a chair in the woodshop, playing music on student-designed bike instruments, creating animated movies in art, planting and growing in the gardens, building ramps in science, designing “Alice in Wonderland”-style magnified objects—at Hillbrook, we have been leaders in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts & mathematics) long before the acronym became trendy.
Ultimately, the Regatta, the Maker’s Faire and other projects are evidence of our deeply held belief that the best education involves hands-on, experiential activities that truly engage students. These projects help students develop core skills—critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication—while instilling in them the confidence to take risks and tackle any challenge that comes their way.
The results? 7th and 8th grade nautical engineers who are so excited about what they are doing that they will spend upwards of 10+ hours outside of school working on building a boat for an optional activity that drew more than half of the students in 7th and 8th grade. 5th grade game designers staying at school past 8 pm on a Friday night striving to finish their pinball machine that is now on display for thousands of people to see at the Faire. A core group of 7th grade builders, all girls, who are working on their own time to design the newest addition to the Village of Friendly Relations.
By the way, for those who missed yesterday’s Regatta, the final heat was as close as I have ever seen. Two 8th grade boats—the “Proud Penguins” powered by Jessica and with building support from Mei Mei and Sonali and “Baraj” powered by Ronan and with building support from Wes and Jerod—were separated by mere inches as they steamed into the wall. In the end, “Baraj” won by a nose and everyone—7th and 8th graders—joyfully jumped in the pool and celebrated a dramatic finish.
With the temperatures in the 90s, there were a lot of us adults jealous that we were not able to join in the learning and the fun.