Owning Their Pivot

REPRESENTING THE LAKESIDE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL EAST TEAM:

Rylee Gill, 6 Years in EAST

Sepesism Francis, 2 Years in EAST

Macy Goss, 6 Years in EAST

Jamie Stallings, Facilitator COVID and other challenges forced EAST at Lakeside Junior High School (Springdale) to pivot this year, and the program stepped up to the challenge using their creativity and work ethic to solve problems in the community as well as their classroom. From creating innovative medical devices for their injured facilitator to creating learning materials for special education students, EAST students at Lakeside Junior High School earned the Cornerstone Award for Project Sophistication and Innovation.

When you learned your program won the Cornerstone Award, what was your reaction?

Rylee: I was so excited when we won the Cornerstone Award! It was unbelievable.

Did you expect to win this year?

Sepesim: I think our program definitely deserved an award. We’ve had some struggles with our facilitator being out because of a surgery, but we were proud of the projects we created. They helped someone or something creatively but they were all so different. I think it shows the diversity of mindsets we have in LJHS.

What was your favorite project?

Macy: Our machine learning project. Even though it didn’t work out how we wanted it to, we learned so much. We tackled this big huge thing, machine learning, and were able to get a model to actually work! I think our pivot too, even though it is much smaller scale, is exciting.

What was your biggest challenge this year?

Jamie: I think the toughest challenge was the lack of normalcy. We began the year expecting it to be essentially normal and it wasn’t. As we were preparing our entry, the January COVID surge hit. During most of January all of our team (including me) were quarantined and had the virus, and I was actually out as we were wrapping up our video. That combined with how COVID affected our projects even this year were pretty big challenges.

How have you grown this year?

Jamie: Our word this year was pivot. All of our projects had some sort of pivot that had to happen. Whether because of COVID or because a project just didn’t work we did a lot of pivoting. The pivots and the reacting to everything forced us to change, adapt, and grow.