We rely a great deal on the kindness of strangers. Sort-of strangers, actually. Much of our material is donated by our families or by businesses with ties to our staff and others. We were recently gifted with three gently used hot glue guns. The problem was that they were switchable between low temperature (105C) and high temperature (165C.) While 105C is hot enough to get your attention and even cause tears in a student, the burns are typically minor and painless after less than an hour. High-temp hot glue guns can quickly cause serious burns and scarring if not treated quickly.
So I broke them. Well, not exactly broke. I disabled the temperature switch after setting it to low temperature by putting a drop of hot glue into it.
Thank you, strangers. (The stranger in this case was Mrs. Mark, who finally decided to part with our in-home elementary arts and crafts tools. Our youngest kids are now in college.)
Last Spring, our campus became a construction site. Portable classrooms were trucked in, regular classrooms were emptied, concrete broken up and poured, all while school continued. Our administration building, including the staff' lounge, was closed down with the main office moving into a portable. This meant that CREATE would be temporarily repurposed as a combination of the staff lunch room, copy room and, for good measure, we moved the staff mailboxes in. All of the makerspace stuff was packed into boxes and stored.
When the students returned in August, there was a lot of residual campus makerspace culture that had lacked a central place of expression. I constantly fielded questions from frustrated makers who wanted to know when CREATE would reopen.
But our maker culture has more momentum than anything that could be overcome by the temporary closure of CREATE. As I've said many times, all of De Vargas is a makerspace. Making continued in classrooms in concert with our Project Based Learning ethos. But, that tinker time itch of free making was still not getting scratched.
On Halloween, that ended...
The storage containers disgorged their contents of boxes marked "Room 8," (CREATE's "real" name.) Over two weeks I unpacked and restored the room to our friendly, comfortable, making environment. I was able to revisit some of our storage and removed almost all of the remaining cabinet doors. The only ones left cover dangerous tools or materials, cleaning supplies, and sink plumbing. Everything else is now wide open with much more in the students' reach.
