Posted by Communications staff on 4/27/2021
Despite running two demanding extracurricular clubs already, computer science teacher Gary Gillespie says the only thing that keeps him from starting more clubs at Sacajawea Middle are the number of hours in the day.
“If there was more time,” Gary said, “I would probably run five more clubs going every day after school, Monday through Friday.”
Gary’s two after school clubs, VR/Coding Club and MakerSpace, meet six days a month, sometimes in the morning and sometimes after school.
“We want to provide opportunities for the kids to make it fit in their busy schedules,” Gary said, “and it provides a niche for those kids who aren’t athletics- or activities-based. It gives them something they can really dive into.”
While the VR/Coding students work on a lot of STEM-related stuff like reprogramming microprocessors and coding for robots and drones, the MakerSpace students do a lot of, as the name insinuates, making.
“I’m really looking for ways for them to learn and to build,” said Gary.
In the time Sac students have been back in person, Gary’s MakerSpace students have started growing hydroponics to give as gifts and will shortly move on to whittling blocks of wood and acrylic into functioning pens (like the one pictured right).
Next fall, Gary hopes to get students working on 3D printers again, as well as teach them about photography and the art of leather work.
“I still have my leather-tooled wallet I made my sophomore year of high school,” he said. “I just want them to be able to design and create and have something they can take with them.”
It’s those types of 21st century skills that are the cornerstone of SPS’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) curriculum
“It’s hands-on and lets students use a different part of their brains than if they were behind a computer with headphones on,” Gary said.
Regardless of the club, Gary makes sure the students have a voice in what they do and learn.
“A lot of times, it’s asking them ‘what interests you?’, ‘what do you want to try?’, and then we go from there. You don’t know what you don’t know until you try it.”
Learn more about CTE at spokaneschools.org/cte
