INNOVATION ON THE CLOCK

EAST students at Hot Springs World Class High School compete in first-ever Make48 Competition in Arkansas

While facilitators were digging in and preparing for this school year at EAST Seminar, one exhibitor was planting the seed for EAST students to experience something special.

Make48 is a national competition where dozens of teams compete across a series of regional events. The goal: to design a product that will address a specific community need. The teams have 48 hours to build a prototype, create a sales sheet, produce a short marketing video, and pitch their idea to a panel of judges.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

For the first time in Make48’s history, a regional competition was held at The Innovation Hub in North Little Rock, Ark., and Hot Springs World Class High School’s EAST program stepped up to the plate.

Facilitator Katrina Watkins led her team of EAST students consisting of senior Chance Fisher and juniors Genevieve Abel and Tessa Rivera into what turned out to be one of the most demanding and challenging 48 hours of their lives.

The team - aptly named “WWMD” after EAST Chief Executive Officer Matt Dozier - prepared for the competition by watching past episodes of Make48 on PBS. The group anticipated creating a consumer product based on the competition’s history, but had to quickly pivot after being dealt a curveball from the start.

“We were tasked with making an interactive outdoor exhibit covering the Trail of Tears in order to honor those who came before us,” Chance said. “So we immediately had to alter our mindsets.”

This created an extra layer of pressure for Katrina and her EAST students, as not only did they have to face the expected challenges of the competition, but they also had to deal with the pressure of handling such a sensitive subject.

“When you mix the usual fatigue and the stress from the event with creating something that could be so important to honor a tremendous group of people, we had to focus even harder on not being in our own way and dishonoring Native Americans,” Katrina said.

What felt like hundreds of ideas were bounced around within the group, as Tessa and company had to accomplish in 48 hours what typical EAST students have an entire year to do.

“The first thing one of our mentors told us to do was to fail quickly,” Tessa said. “We didn’t have much time to focus on

The first thing one of our mentors told us to do was to fail quickly,” Tessa said. “We didn’t have much time to focus on our failures and analyze them. We had to move on.

WWMD used every minute they possibly could to work on their project, staying past midnight each night of the competition and consistently being one of the last teams in the building.

And as you’d expect, working with the same people for 48 hours straight can get heated.

“We constantly had our heads down and would start fighting with each other,” Genevieve said. “We are all so different in our personalities and skills, that working together on something in such a short amount of time was super stressful.”

The event was an eye-opening experience for Katrina as well.

“This event showed me that in our EAST program, we don’t challenge each other’s ideas enough,” Katrina said. “Because when they were challenged, they had a difficult time with that. When you’re dealing with important projects like these, you should be challenged and tasked to explain your idea if someone Coming out on the other side of the competition, everyone on WWMD agreed that they felt stronger as

students, educators, and people. “I think we all learned the lesson that we can’t let our emotions completely take over,” Genevieve said. “We needed empathy and passion to capture the essence of the project, but didn’t need as much as we had.”

Their time in EAST played to many of their strengths, however, as solving real-world problems by working with community partners is something these students have been doing for years.

“If I wasn’t in EAST, I don’t think I would have ever been in a situation beforehand of needing to create a real solution to a problem,” Tessa said. “You don’t get to experience that ‘big picture’ when doing normal schoolwork, but my time working with community partners in the real world within EAST was a huge asset when it came to Make48.”

If EAST at Hot Springs World Class High School is crowned as the winner of their regional competition, they will qualify to compete in the national competition in Washington D.C., win $2,000 for their efforts, and will be featured on next season’s PBS show.

Regardless of the final result (and emotional fatigue), Team WWMD has no regrets about becoming the first EAST program to participate in Make48.

“It was totally worth it,” Katrina said. “It’s something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life and I know they will take so much from it in the future.”