Andrew Wood, 4-H member and Auburn resident, shares about David Lapham and his Emerald Star Project of Building Engineers within 4-H.
Receiving a gold or platinum star is 4-H's equivalent of the Eagle Scout award. It can take years to accomplish everything it takes for these awards and the boys and girls that come out are truly impressive individuals. However, while there are many different community service activities needed to achieve these awards, there is a different award for a large service project carried out and led by the member. This award is called an Emerald Star.
To earn an Emerald Star, a 4-H member must plan and execute a large community service project. These range from food drives and fund-raisers to raising money and building picnic tables at local parks. One particularly ambitious Emerald Star project currently in the works is called Building Engineers. High school youth, David Lapham and Andrew Wood are the 4-Hers behind this project, and have put many hours bringing it to its final stages.
Building Engineers is a curriculum to spread the love of engineering to kids (2nd-8th grade) and make the concepts fun and easy to learn through hands-on activities. They built it with four main lessons, each one including a very small bit of explanation and then activities for the kids to take and run with. "We really don't want to preach to them," David said, "kids learn by doing. We want to get out of the way and let them figure it out, and they will learn something so much better than if they had it explained to them."
They were disturbed by the lack of strong engineering material to really get kids interested in this fascinating subject.
"Engineering has been the fastest growing job market year over year for many years and shows no signs of slowing, and many tech companies are having trouble finding enough talent." Andrew said. "If we can show kids the fun side of engineering, it will go a long way in improving their future and open so many doors to them."
After a test run at a local school, iLearn Academy, and at a 4-H event, they have had very positive results. All of the kids have loved it, devouring lessons on structural integrity, leverage, gearing, and more.
"Our favorite part is definitely seeing what our students come up with. We have been blown away by their creativity, and we gotta say, those second and third graders were brilliant!" David exclaimed. "And we have been surprised across the board. Everyone seemed to pick these concepts up quickly and apply them intelligently."
"There was absolutely no difference in the abilities of boys and girls, despite the fact that engineering is typically a male dominated industry." Andrew added. "Actually, the girls usually outperformed the boys in our activities! So hopefully we can change some of those outdated perceptions."
At their last event they led kids of all ages, from preschool to high school, in building small trebuchets. The activity was insanely successful: their tables were constantly packed and they ran out of supplies and had to run get more craft sticks, cleaning a few stores out of their stock.
They didn't know that the project would be so successful, but their backgrounds made this kind of project perfect for them. David has been tinkering since he was 5 and taking his family's electronics apart and putting them back together. Andrew was on a series of championship robotics teams. The pair met at 4-H camp a number of years ago.
From here, they are planning to polish their curriculum. They are hoping to raise enough money to purchase the necessary materials (so far they have been funding the project themselves) and then donate the entire program to 4-H.
"We want this to live on beyond us and go on helping 4-Hers for a long time to come. By making it easier for other adults and teens to start engineering projects even without special skills that will mean the next generation of 4-Hers will have advantages that we didn't." Andrew said. "That's what 4-H is all about."
If you are interested in finding out more information about Placer County 4-H, please visit our website and social media sites to get more information.
http://ucanr.edu/sites/placercounty4h/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Placer-County-4-H/192334750781750