{"id":92,"date":"2015-08-27T15:08:11","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T22:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/?p=92"},"modified":"2015-09-18T13:36:20","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T20:36:20","slug":"making-lemonade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/making-lemonade\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Lemonade"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dina Sinclair ’17 spent her pre-Harvey Mudd<\/strong>\u00a0summer teaching math to the kids of some of her high school teachers. When one of the parents wrote a blog post about the success of these sessions, Sinclair got a call from a woman in San Diego, wondering if she\u2019d stage a science- and math-themed birthday party for her 6-year-old son. By then, Sinclair was a first year at Harvey Mudd. She enlisted her friend, Lisa Yin \u201917, to go to San Diego with her, and together they put on a birthday party complete with baking soda and vinegar volcanoes and the makings of invisible ink. It was a lot of fun, she says, and the duo was determined to teach together again.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of my freshman year, I went to [mathematics] Professor Michael Orrison to ask about teaching opportunities, and he suggested teaching math to elementary school kids,\u201d Sinclair says.<\/p>\n

\"Dina<\/a>
Dina Sinclair \u201917 and Lisa Yin \u201917 brought ideas from their science- and math-themed birthday party business to the third-grade class of Jean Merrill at Chaparral Elementary School in Claremont.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sinclair again turned to Yin, and they embarked upon an independent study with Orrison, reading papers by mathematicians about best and worst strategies for teaching math and developing a curriculum for the lessons they were going to teach to Jean Merrill\u2019s third graders at Chaparral Elementary School in Claremont.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessor Orrison helped us come up with broad goals for what we hoped students would take away, based on what had worked with two Mudd students [Elly Schofield \u201913 and Nate Pinsky \u201913] who\u2019d taught in Jean\u2019s classroom before. We used those goals generally, but we definitely brainstormed new, specific lessons of our own,\u201d Yin says.<\/p>\n

Sinclair and Yin based their lesson plans around the concept of ratios. \u201cYou learn how much skill it takes to be a good third grade teacher,\u201d Sinclair says. \u201cJean had to translate for us. For instance, the students didn\u2019t know what a ratio was, but they did know about fractions. They were really excited to answer questions. Hands shot up in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Merrill seconds that observation. \u201cThird grade\u20148- and 9-year-olds\u2014is a wonderful age. Every new concept is exciting to them. I told Dina and Lisa, \u2018I bet you\u2019ve learned just as much as the kids in the class have.\u2019 It was a big step back in time for these women. They are incredible students themselves, but they had to get used to bringing it back to a level that\u2019s understandable for third grade. For instance, the kids didn\u2019t know where a decimal point was on a calculator.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything that Sinclair and Yin did in the classroom had a hands-on component to it. They brought in multi-media presentations, visual aids, information sheets and data sheets. Their lessons focused on ratios in different ways: planetary distance in space, probability with rolling dice, octaves in music and taking a recipe for lemonade and increasing it. \u201cThey\u2019ve been great. Realistically, when you do this fulltime, you just don\u2019t have the time to do these amazing lessons,\u201d says Merrill. \u201cDina and Lisa have put such time and energy into their lesson plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

When I see a student take the initiative for an\u00a0independent study class that comes from their\u00a0mind and their heart, it means a lot. To design\u00a0a class that taps into that passion, to generate\u00a0something from scratch, is just amazing.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Gabriela Gamiz<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yin remembers the lemonade lesson fondly. \u201cSome kids were surprised by how much sugar we were putting in,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd one kid said it was better than his mom\u2019s lemonade!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey showed so much enthusiasm for things we take for granted,\u201d Sinclair says. \u201cThere was a moment in our first lesson when we were talking about scaling factors and trying to scale the planetary system down to the size of the classroom\u2014in other words, convert from millions of kilometers. So we had them take out their calculators and divide 8 meters (the length of the classroom) by 4,500 million kilometers, and they got 0.00178. They\u2019d never seen such a small number on a calculator before!\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabriela Gamiz of Harvey Mudd\u2019s Office of Community Engagement says what excites her is seeing the Mudd students\u2019 independent study with Professor Orrison bring math and education to a crossroads. \u201cWhen I see a student take the initiative for an independent study class that comes from their mind and their heart, it means a lot. To design a class that taps into that passion, to generate something from scratch, is just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Feedback: Essential to the Mix<\/h2>\n

Using the passion they have for technology, students are creating viable solutions for community partners in Jim Boerkoel\u2019s computer science class, User Interface Design.<\/p>\n

Boerkoel, an assistant professor of computer science, places particular emphasis in his course on accessibility, global awareness, cultural sensitivity and interface design as a tool for challenging stereotypes of marginalized social groups. He received funding to create the class from the Holen Community Engagement Fund, which supports Harvey Mudd faculty in the development of courses related to community engagement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first semester (fall 2014) we ran it as a website development class, basically,\u201d says Boerkoel. \u201cGabriela Gamiz connected us to three local organizations: Claremont Homeless Advocacy Program, Real Connections and Project Caring and Sharing. We realized the students\u2019 projects provided some real value to our community partners\u2014two of which have launched their new websites\u2014but I think our students were antsy to have more application development experience. So, during spring 2015, we re-ran the same class but instead focused on developing mobile applications. Students chose whether to develop a mobile iOS or Android application.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n

Vanessa Ronan \u201915, a computer science major, worked with the organization Bike San Gabriel Valley to develop an app that kids can use to invite one another to go on bike rides.\u201cJonathan Rodriguez from Bike SGV thought it would be cool if the app could be used in the classroom, too, so teachers could track the kids\u2019 progress and give them rewards in class if they biked a lot that week\u2014make it kind of a competition. He\u2019s talked with some middle schools in El Monte about it already,\u201d Ronan says.<\/p>\n

She notes that there were many more female than male students in the class, a confirmation of Boerkoel\u2019s hunch that the class would be popular among typically underrepresented computer science majors and off-campus majors. \u201cIt was more of a creative class,\u201d Ronan says.<\/p>\n

Ronan, who graduated in May and is launching an interior design startup called Decorater, a platform to crowd-source interior design, noted that for her the most challenging\u2014and ultimately rewarding\u2014part of Boerkoel\u2019s class was user testing. \u201cOur very first assignment was to go out and interview people,\u201d she says. \u201cI tend to be shy and thought I would hate it, but it was very helpful.\u201d Her design team asked kids in the Claremont Village to use the app to do three tasks. The team then noted the results and steered their design away from what the kids found difficult. \u201cThe point is to try to make the app intuitive. One button of our design had an icon on it that the kids couldn\u2019t identify (a list of bike logs that looked like a book), so we turned it into the words \u2018Bike Log,\u2019 which is a place for the user to list all the bike rides they\u2019ve taken.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now when I\u2019m designing the app and the website for my company, instead of just assuming the design is good, I\u2019m definitely going to do some user testing,\u201d she adds. She did so during a summer meeting of Harvey Mudd\u2019s Entrepreneurial Network (HMCEN), a gathering of mostly alumni who share startup stories.<\/p>\n

Mackenzie Leake SCR \u201915, worked with Community Senior Services, an organization that maintains a database of services for area seniors. She also saw the value in user testing for her project. \u201cThe focus was on designing the app and making it really accessible to our potential users,\u201d she says. \u201cThey had a strong vision of what they wanted. We would send design ideas to our contact, Abby Castillo, and she gave us feedback. We also did user testing with three seniors at Community Senior Services, who let us know their number one frustration was with small text size, and number two was with small button size. They also pointed out concerns they had, like making sure that it\u2019s easy to navigate back. We learned, when in doubt, make the buttons bigger!\u201d<\/p>\n

Leake was drawn to working on a project for Community Senior Services because it\u2019s a cause she believes in. She thinks it\u2019s important to step away from coding and think more about the people that one\u2019s product will serve.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like students to produce something that\u2019s motivating and useful,\u201d says Boerkoel. \u201cStudents are used to projects with clean, well-defined goals that get graded against a \u2018right answer.\u2019 With community service, there\u2019s a natural frustration with not having well-defined goals or a right answer\u2014and an opportunity there. I think that\u2019s powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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