Click here to listen to Episode 55: HELP
It’s back.
HELP – Hillbrook Engineering Leaders Program – is back on our Los Gatos campus, and, if I had to guess, the timing couldn’t be better. HUB teacher Martin Magana is relaunching our long-standing student-led design and engineering team that receives requests for projects from members of our community and then gets to work making them. Their slogan? “You request, we make.”
Started six or seven years ago by former Hillbrook engineering teacher Shea Ellerson, the program is an effort to give students real-world training in designing and making things to solve people’s problems. Past examples have included marker boxes, signs for the garden, a colonial jacks game for a 5th grade history class, and a scrap paper box.
Using the many resources of the Hub, students have a broad-range of capabilities, from laser cutting and 3D printing to sewing, knitting/crocheting and woodworking. They can even do some simple electronics.
The program ensures that students are making and building with a purpose, using the skills they are developing to help others in our community. Just as importantly, it means they are making with a real end-user in mind, someone who actually intends to use what they create.
Several years ago, students designed a scrap paper box for one of the math teachers, only to discover that the quarter sheets of paper didn’t fit in the beautifully finished box. The result? They had to rebuild the box and this time they made sure to ask ALL of the right questions.
So, calling all students, teachers and other members of the staff – reach out to Martin and his students. You can help them by providing them with meaningful projects to do, while they will help you by making the things you need. It’s simple. “You request, we make.”