My first few days of LEAP
Ok, so here I am writing my first blog post, thinking about what I’m going to do for my project. During the thinking process the teachers organised a couple of workshops. I thought, why aren’t we starting with our project? But after the week I realised that it was all to open up our minds to new ideas. We had a few people come to our school to show us how to use, design and make a 3D printer. They brought 3 different printers. One normal printer, it looked like a plastic box with a mechanical hand, where the plastic comes out. The second one was a 3D printer especially designed for all ages, it worked with magnets to keep everything together and to easily put it together and take it down (see picture 1). The 3rd printer was really the most fascinating, it didn’t use plastic but instead it used clay. You had to put clay in a big tube and it would press it out onto a plate in a design from the computer that you send to the printer. The only disadvantage is that you’d still have to bake the clay after printing it. We were allowed to make to prints in plastic so we decided on a tiny dragon and a tiny missile launcher. They also made a pot in clay but we couldn’t take it because it had to be baked first.
The next day some guest came and they shared their ideas for projects that we could do. The teachers also shared their ideas. Because everyone else and I didn’t know what we were going to do as a project yet, we were really intrigued by all the possibilities and different directions you could take a project. Some projects were worldwide, had a lot to do with advertising on the internet. But some were just based on our school, improving it, changing it and the most important part, using recycled material and giving it back to the earth by making something useful and beautiful. As for me I always thought I wanted to do something with art but now that everyone shared their ideas and we all came to a decision to make a playground in our school. I still liked the idea because art is still incorporated by designing, architecture, etc.
A few days before noon Grade 10s had ISA tests, really unfortunate because the other people in LEAP did some cool stuff. But in the afternoon the other LEAP people planned a trip for us and we weren’t allowed to know what it was until we were there. They planned to go to a palm reading man, but it was closed. Instead we walked back to school through the rice fields and had some mango ice cream. It was a shame that the palm reading was closed but all by all it was really fun. On Friday until Monday I went to Singapore and missed out on a lot of fun stuff. :(
4 weeks to complete is a short time. We’ve thought and thought on how to best complete the playground in such a short time. Some people even said it wasn’t possible, but we thought we could do it. We thought about the design, space, material, etc. We considered a lot of spaces surrounding Green School and finally found the perfect spot. With a bit of cutting down dead trees and plants. Looking at the space we had we made a perfect plan and design so everything fit into place. At the moment we are working to make a module in clay to present our idea to the head of school, so she has a good idea on what we are planning to make.
What I really like is the flexibility. You can do whatever you want whenever you want. Not that you can play video games for 3 hours straight, but you can choose which part you contribute to the project. If you slack off yourself, it’s harder for the other people to continue the project because everyone depends on each other. I really like the LEAP method because you really learn how to work in a group. But on the other side you really learn how to work individually and learning how to push yourself to the fullest to complete the project and make it good.
I hope that this project turns out well. It’s a big commitment and you have to dedicate all your time to it. It prepares you for the future. LEAP is more like work than school, not child labor, but actually doing something and doing it fulltime without any other classes to concentrate on. Also doing things with your hands is really fun instead of sitting behind your desk the whole day. I love how you can chose what you learn and what you invest your time in. Because sometimes your in classes that don’t interest you as much and that’s why you don’t work as well.
Today we have finally got an approval from the head of school and we have started getting materials to build and clear the space we’re building on. Another small project we’ve been working on is collecting skeletons of dead animals and cleaning them up to then later use them to learn about the anatomy of those animals. We’re planning on calling zoo’s and other contacts if they have big animal heads from pigs or something else. This really interests me because normall when you learn about anatomy in biology you learn it from books or online, but to see it in real life is really special and fascinating.
So to end this blog post, I would highly recommend doing something you really love and not do sit around behind your laptop. LEAP is a perfect opportunity to expand your horizon. I definitely enjoy it much more than normal classes. Also if the group project is not really something you love, just try you best to incorporate your own talents.
Babette Vanderhaeghen
