With the new school year off and running, students at Perry Elementary may have already had some interaction with the newest addition to the school’s curriculum: the maker space.
Principal Ned Menke explains, the maker space is a place students and teachers can sign up to use, where the kids will be challenged with problem solving situations. Participants have a variety of resources available to them to complete the tasks, with the only restriction being their own creativity. Menke says it took a lot of work to get the program off the ground, but he’s excited for the possibilities the maker space creates. “We did some work in our old science lab that had been under-utilized over the last few years. And we got it cleaned up and made some changes there, added in some other things like robotics and different components like that as well. And it’s been a fun little project, it’s going to start off slow I’m sure, but hopefully we’re going to have a lot of teachers in and out of the maker space as we continue to build that.”
Menke adds, the elementary staff began exploring the maker space idea towards the middle of last year, with a goal to have it up and running by the beginning of this year. Having achieved that goal, Menke says it’s now a matter of getting students into the maker space to begin experimentation. To learn more about this and other topics involving the new school year at Perry Elementary, click the link below to listen to the Perry Fareway Let’s Talk Dallas County program with Menke and Assistant Principal Ryan Marzen.