Feedback from architects

Last week the MPX10 class walked over to the University of Hawaii School of Architecture. Students have been working on a design project since last semester, trying to create a display space that will allow students to share their work more easily on campus. The meeting with the architects allowed students to both practice their presentations and get feedback on their designs.

Several students decided to rebuild their models after meeting with the professional architects because they got such great ideas on how to improve their work!

“One piece of advice they gave us is to make a person that is to scale to our model of the display space. They said that would help because it will show how big the model is and it will help the judges understand our model more. Another advice they gave us, is that we should put turf-like material under our model and label by numbers the different sides of the model and explain the gazebo by the numbers.” Blaine Tonaki

“I think it was a really good idea that we went over to UH to talk to architects and people who are working in that [the design] field. It was really useful and it helped me to get ready for the real thing coming up. Some of the positive things I took away from this time was that they told us to PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE! If you practice a lot it will make a big impact on your presentation.” Malia Strohlin

The final pitch of their designs is this Wednesday morning. Please wish your son or daughter good luck as they will be presenting to Dr. Turnbull, Mr. Cordova, Mr. McManus, Dr. Russell, Mr. Watson, and two local architects.  The winning design will be integrated into the school's master plan!

Mock Trial of Huckleberry Finn

Is that a real judge? No, that is Trevor Blake and Aly Soares serving as the judge and clerk of our mock trial! It was Parents vs. Mark Twain and the Board of Education, debating the question: is the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn promoting racism? If so, should it be taught in American public schools?

Students preparing for the trial with Judge Pacarro and guest attorneys

 As a teacher, it is difficult to convince students to read books from different time periods, especially ones written in dialects of the American south in the mid 1880s. However, MPX10 students had a real reason to read: they would be serving as a lawyer, judge, witness, or jury member in our mock trial. The UH Richardson School of Law was kind enough to lend us their practice courtroom for our trial, and we were honored to have Judge Paccaro, Attorney Hochman, and Ms. Soares in the audience!

Huck, Jim, and the Dr. 

Mark Twain on the stand

The plan, as devised by the clerk

A focused jury takes notes!

Pap on the stand

After the trial, Judge Paccaro and Mr. Hochman were able to give the students direct feedback about their roles in the trial.  They commented on procedural elements that could be improved--like the attorneys speaking to one another directly across the table--as well as strong lines of questioning by the prosecution in particular.

Feedback from Mr. Hochman and Judge Pacarro

In the end, the jury unanimously found Mark Twain not guilty of promoting racism, which is consistent with an astute reading of the novel.  However, from an educational standpoint, the verdict was irrelevant to me.  When I saw the attorneys on both teams combing through the novel looking for opportunities to verbally goad their opponents, or calling "objection your honor--where is that stated in the book?" I could tell students were ingraining in themselves the importance of using in-text citations, a concept I have struggled to get through in a traditional classroom.

The whole crew

In his iconic youtube talk Sir Ken Robinson challenges teachers to create schools that don't kill creativity. For 3 hours today while students were engaged and listening to one another, practicing public speaking, staying in character, and responding to text-focused questions on the fly, I felt confident MPX10s had avoided that pitfall of education.

MPX10 Art Walk in History

"My art piece represents how the country was built upon the constant communication between its inhabitants" writes Ethan Jung. This sentence started his artist's statement accompanying the art piece depicting the role of information technology in the United States. MPX10 students presented their work to more than one hundred visitors in the Weinberg Seminar room on Tuesday night.

Please click here to see a photo gallery. 

Students chose their research topics after a survey of US history, 1492 to the present. Topics covered a large range of their interests from Native Americans, agriculture, and disease, to ships, homosexuals, and African Americans. After conducting college-level research and presenting their findings to one another, students studied art techniques of contemporary artists including Kara Walker and Robert Raushenberg. Finally, they built a piece of art that demonstrated their findings on their research.

"This drawing is of a court room. There are two men that are whispering to each other about the woman. This is how sexism works these days not up front but in whispers," wrote Bradley Sakaguchi about his art piece explaining the history of women in the U.S. "In the future I hope that we will look at each other not as males or females, but as humans. We should be treated as equals."