September 29, 2003
FOR TROUBLED MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS,
ENGINEERING COMPETITION
OPENS NEW VISTAS ON THE WORLD AND THEMSELVES
Some are autistic. Some read at second-grade levels or live in homes without parental supervision, a telephone or sufficient food. For others, simple eye contact is impossible.
These are America's "at-risk" students, so battered by internal and external forces that merely showing up for school and making it through the day are considered achievements. Increasingly, however, middle school teachers are discovering that the National Engineers Week Future City CompetitionTM, a popular educational outreach program, is proving remarkably successful in helping to pull these students back from the brink.
Since it began in 1993, more than 125,000 students have tackled the not-for-profit program. By any measure, Future City is difficult: seventh- and eighth-graders design and build computer and three-dimensional models of cities of tomorrow, write an essay and city abstract, and present and defend their designs in front of a panel of engineer judges.
At once academically rigorous and infectiously fun, Future City easily attracts bright, attentive students who thrive on intellectual challenges such as the hands-on experience of "real world" uses of math and science, as well as civics, public speaking and working as a team.
Yet, teachers across the country say Future City also provides an astonishingly useful tool for bringing out the best in students struggling at the most fundamental levels -- inattentive, truant, uncooperative. Though no one claims it as a cure-all, teachers say the program has no less than transformed at-risk students into active and eager participants who rise to the occasion and run with it. In some cases, they insist, it has literally rescued children from seemingly certain failure.
"One of my eighth-grade boys had this kind of behavior beyond behavior," explains Katherine Everett, a teacher of students with learning disabilities at Piedmont Middle School in San Jose, California, "making noises in the class, instigating trouble and refusing to do the work. About halfway through our Future City project, I gave him a job as lead on the construction crew. He was a different kid," Everett says. "And he has been like that ever since."
Another student, "moody, dark and absent," similarly benefited, the teacher says. "She made a huge turnaround. Now she helps other kids in the classroom. She is now a leader."
"Most special-ed teachers wouldn't think you could do this, and neither did I," Everett admits. "But this is a phenomenal opportunity for the kids."
More than 1,000 schools will send teams to one of 36 Future City regional competitions in January 2004 to vie for an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., for national finals in February. Everett’s experience is echoed by teachers in virtually every region.
This is the fourth year that Leslie Isaacs, an eighth-grade teacher at Beverly Hills Middle School in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, has fielded a Future City team, which has included a student with Tourette’s Syndrome, another on house arrest, and another suffering severe emotional turmoil. Isaacs, who's taught for 23 years, says she builds her teams from "the ones who need that extra chance, the ones so way out of the box that they fall below the lowest assessment."
Future City, she says, is sometimes a student’s first glimpse of hope. "They have no constant in their lives, none. And now they do. That's why Future City is such an asset." She particularly likes how the program instills self-confidence. "When my kids are at the competition, you would never know what kind of class they're in. They shake your hand and look you in the eye. They actually look you in the eye. This is something they’ll carry throughout their lives."
At Geyer Middle School near Fort Wayne, Indiana, 95 percent of the student body qualifies for the federally-funded lunch program. Shannon Rumschlag, who teaches the lower 25 percent of those boys and girls, has also seen Future City work wonders for even the most reluctant of students. One Future City competitor, she says, was later elected student body president. "She wouldn’t have done it without Future City," says Rumschlag. "Future City made her brave."
Others on the team grew, too. "After doing the program," she says. "They said they would now go to college."
Teachers say Future City’s benefit for at-risk students may not be obvious to the untrained eye, but they know better. Jane Conroe of Maple Grove Junior/Senior High School in Bemus Point, New York, near Buffalo, says the city her students produced last year might not have looked so great, but it was great to her. "When the judges came to our table, their faces looked very disappointed," she says of the model presented by her team -- a student who read at a second-grade level, an autistic child, and a student with Attention Deficit Disorder and hypertension. "Their level of model was the lowest you could imagine. But the reason my students were there was just like every other team: They wanted to be there.
They know they’re not as good as everyone else. They figure that out early on, but Future City gave them an opportunity to do something that they could do and that gave them a sense of accomplishment. Believe me, those are huge positives."
For some students, the at-risk difficulties don't stem from a lack of intellectual prowess, but from family circumstances, says Mary Lightbody at Walnut Springs Middle School near Columbus, Ohio. “These are impoverished families who move around a lot, and with little parental supervision. The kids assume a burden far beyond what they should be assuming and are at risk of dropping out of school because they don't see a reason to come to school," she says.
"Then they say, 'I got this awesome project called Future City!' and lo and behold there's a reason to come to school." For the first time, Lightbody says, students see "the real world and why they need to learn. "
In particular, she praises the range of talents Future City elicits. "First it's a computer game," she explains. "Then the essay uses a whole different set of skills. Building the model uses math skills to scale up. And it's creative because it's futuristic, which is extremely exhilarating for kids. Suddenly it all comes together," she says, "because then they want to know stuff."
It's an impression that can last for years, says Lightbody. "I had one of my students come to me again in tenth grade and tell me that he had to make a presentation, and that he knew he could do it because of Future City."
Like others in her field, Lightbody is struck by how Future City increases eye contact among at-risk students. "The hardest thing is eye contact. When you don't feel good about yourself, the easiest thing is to mumble your way along and look at your toes. Almost all these kids started out that way. But as their self-confidence increased, they could look me in the eye because they were so caught up in their question and what they wanted to know that they forget that looking someone in the eye is difficult to do. They catch on fire. It's a big change."
DeAnna Kellenberger of Clear Creek Amana Middle School in Iowa also noticed a big change with Future City among her "twice exceptional" students, high test scorers who nonetheless have enormous difficulties performing in a regular class setting. "You see a different kind of energy. They get engaged. They get involved in conversations," she says. Recalling one student who regularly scored in the 97th percentile on exams, but whose cognitive process was three times slower than average, she quotes from his Future City comment card.
"It was fun, but I also learned something." he wrote. "That's never happened before."
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