Sunnyside Future City STEAM Program

Wouldn’t the world be an amazing place if people worked together to solve community problems? Jackie Nichols wanted her students to do just that by creating an opportunity for students to design and create sustainable cities of the future. Mentors in the form of professional community members and Future City alumni worked with students to apply their research to imagine cities of the future and create concept art for their city models.

Students were asked to take stock of their resources, research resilient power grids and sustainable urban design, and present their solutions to an authentic audience of engineers, city planners, and architects. Students started to see their community and its residents as valuable resources to help solve urban challenges, like resilient city power grids and emergency management. Because of this experience students became stronger, more resourceful individuals as well as better problem-solvers.

Project length

2 months

Resources

None

  • Problem Based Learning gives students the opportunity to develop their talents and find their authentic voice through real world, relevant problem solving.

    Jackie Nichols, Teacher
  • Magic happens when students discover their ability to accomplish what they thought was impossible.

    Jackie Nichols, Teacher
  • It’s inspiring to see many young minds really think about real world problems and what they can do to help, and then apply it to my own life and what I can do. The Future City students feel more and more comfortable asking for help from different people with different perspectives and opinions.

    Future City Student Mentor
  • Thank you for coming in and judging our model, Bonjae. Your advice allowed us to make the model better and gave me and my team a new experience and gave me and my team a new experience presenting in front of others. You helped us prepare for what was ahead which helped us pull through Future City competition. Thank you for your time.

    Student
  • Without your mentoring we would not have been able to win the Civic Design Award and Architectural Excellence Award in Future City. Your help made a huge difference and impact on our model. Thank you for your time and help.

    Student
  • Thank you so much for sketching our models, so we can have an ideal view of our model before constructing it. The sketch helped us a lot knowing where to put things before we did. The concept art for the model was helpful to us and the other teams!

    Student
  • Our mentor was the most helpful person in the project. Without our concept art, we wouldn't be able to build our Future City project!

    8th Grade Student
  • Having accessibility to mentors and help is really useful, because you can learn new things as well as get other’s opinions.

    8th Grade Student
  • The people that helped me can help others too. I hope they do; it is good to support programs like this, so all the people can learn.

    8th Grade Student
  • Thank you to all the visitors and volunteers who helped this year!

    8th Grade Student
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