Class Acts
Working on a project with others involves many obstacles beyond the scholastic. These students rose to the challenge of collaboration, time management and problem-solving with shining results.
Logan Rodgers: Seton Catholic School Eighth-Grader
Logan Rodgers has a bit of a green thumb. He likes to garden with his family and take care of the lawn. He’s fascinated by the salamanders and garden snakes he sees around his yard. He tries to get outside nearly every day. So he’s thrilled that exploring nature is part of his math and science curriculum at Seton Catholic School.
“It’s really relaxing to get out of the classroom and slow down and appreciate nature for how amazing it is,” he says.
Seton students see classroom lessons come to life on regular field trips to local parks. In seventh grade, he removed invasive species from the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and tested the water quality of Hudson Springs Park’s lake. As an eighth-grader this year, Logan and his math class went to Hudson Springs to unearth geometry in nature.
Logan was skeptical at first. He’s done real-world problem-solving in math class but hadn’t used it outside of school.
Yet surprisingly when he hiked through Hudson Springs, math was all around him. Two trees next to each other were parallel lines. A curved branch made a parabola. The wooden beams in the roof of a picnic shelter formed adjacent angles.
“Wow, there’s so much out here that I didn’t know to look for, and it’s really eye-opening,” Logan says.
He made posters with photos of these discoveries, including branches that formed a vertical angle. He wrote the definition of a vertical angle and outlined a mathematical proof that explained why the branches were a vertical angle.
The budding mathematician hopes to make it his career. Seeing math come alive has made him curious to explore the field more.
“It was really fun to do it with the whole group and be in nature with all the shapes,” he says.
Jayne Barber: Lake Center Christian School Eighth-Grader
The only roller coasters Jayne Barber has been on are the tiny ones for kids at the fair but not any big ones for adults.
The 14-year-old, however, got to design a roller coaster with three of her classmates last spring in Kim Jordan’s science class. Groups had only four class periods of 41 minutes each to complete the project. They had to collaboratively answer two pages of questions on concepts like energy transformation, create a design and get it approved, receive their materials, build the model and successfully run it through three trials.
Jayne liked the project for the imaginative way Jordan presented it: as a grown-up scenario where the students were engineers in charge of creating a brand-new thrill ride. “It’s much more exciting than a test or just building a model if we have pretend storylines,” she says.
Each model had to include at least two hills and one loop, and each group had a finite amount of supplies: two pieces of black pipe insulation cut in half for the track, one roll of masking tape and one marble as the car.
Jayne’s group employed trial and error to get the angles on the hills appropriate for managing the energy needed to propel the marble through the turns and loops. Their biggest challenge was an inverted turn, where the track turned sideways. “That was hard because if we didn’t have enough energy to get around the inverted turn, the marble would fall off,” she says. After a few tries, they successfully got it through.
The project showed Jayne how effective hands-on learning can be. “We can look at papers, at a graph, but we don’t completely grasp it until we get to do it and create something out of it,” she says. Now that she’s built a roller coaster, she’s ready for her next adventure: Cedar Point.
Heidi Vereecken: St. Sebastian Parish School Sixth-Grader
It’s never too early to learn compassion and creativity.
Heidi Vereecken is a 12-year-old girl who’s bursting with both. Her passion for art began when she started drawing at a young age. “I’ve always loved art. I draw in my free time a lot,” she says.
That’s why when Heidi and the entire sixth-grade class at St. Sebastian Parish School were tasked with designing a T-shirt, she wanted to be the art director on her team. For the Traveling T-Shirt Project, teams of students acted as mock companies that designed shirts with the goal of making a winning design they could sell to Akronites to benefit a local charity.
Through the University of Cincinnati economics department, students connected with professional mentors via Google Hangout and learned how to interview, market and create their finished product. Students also networked with design companies in Akron.
Heidi and her team tailored their winning design to benefit Project Outrun, a local nonprofit whose mission is to put custom-designed shoes on kids battling pediatric cancer. “It’s not totally popular yet, so we thought a fun way to spread the word about it would be through our T-shirt project,” says Heidi. Their shirt is light gray with St. Sebastian’s crest on the front. On the back is their team’s motto, “Running for a better tomorrow,” a terrier dog and a yellow ribbon representing childhood cancer.
After learning how to channel her creativity, Heidi looks forward to supporting Project Outrun in the future. “Our group worked so well together that I know I’ll do something next year that is creative and benefits other people,” she says.
Ryan Yovichin: The Lippmann School Eighth-Grader
Ryan Yovichin has an appreciation for Native American culture. That’s because he’s experienced it firsthand. He has stayed with members of the Northern Cheyenne Nation in Montana as part of a cultural exchange program with the Lippman School. Ryan tried native food, saw ancient sites and helped build — and slept in — a teepee.
So when his humanities class began discussing ways to honor Native American contributions last year, he enthusiastically helped brainstorm.
They already knew what didn’t work. A controversial proposal to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day had already failed to make it through Akron City Council. A fellow student suggested celebrating both holidays: having a separate North American First Peoples’ Day but keeping Columbus Day. Everyone agreed.
Frequent class speaker retired Judge Marvin Shapiro helped them draft a resolution for Akron City Council. Councilwoman Marilyn Keith sponsored it, and the students wrote supporting statements. Ryan’s was about the significance of Native American culture.
“To have a day to learn about them is important so that we don’t forget about them and what they did for our country,” he says.
Students got a rare behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to pass a city law. They also actively participated in government by reading their statements before a subcommittee, and a few lucky students went before council. It passed one week later. In October, students and community members, along with Northern Cheyenne representatives, commemorated the holiday’s first celebration by walking the historic Portage Path in Akron, once traveled by Native Americans. Ryan saw his class make a real change.
“We should learn a little bit more about our history,” he says. “It would help us as a society recognize those are the people that were here before us.”
Next up for Ryan and his classmates? They hope to make the holiday a law at Summit County Council — and then it’s on to the state level.
Kathryn Burns: Our Lady of the Elms Senior
Even though Kathryn Burns has never been to Colombia, a piece of her artwork is there.
Burns and a few other students did a voluntary project in their art class for the Memory Project, a nonprofit youth arts organization. The collaborative project entails taking photographs of children who are overcoming the challenges of poverty in South American countries and giving them to students in the U.S. who then create artistic portraits from the photos.
“I was really interested in the project, but I didn’t think I’d be able to do her portrait justice,” says Burns, a senior and Akron native.
This was Burns’ first time participating. After receiving her photo, she became determined to give sweet-faced little Emily something to cherish for years to come.
“At first, I wanted to do charcoal, but I didn’t want it to rub off on her hands and get her all dirty,” she says. “I went with acrylic because I didn’t want it to fade. I wanted it to last.” The portrait background pops with pink because Burns learned that pink is Emily’s favorite color.
The portraits were delivered, and the Memory Project team made a video to share with the artists so they could see how their generosity impacts everyone. Burns spent about seven weeks total detailing her portrait but says she would do it again.
“I learned a lot of people don’t have the same kind of life as me. I grew up with Barbies and toys at my disposal,” she says. “But this showed me that the smallest act of kindness can make the biggest difference for someone in need.”