Going back to middle school!

May 11, 2009 7:05 AM

How to keep a Career Day presentation interesting for middle schoolers...

My husband agreed to give a 45-minute "career day" type of presentation to a group of middle schoolers this Friday. He's a bit worried about keeping the kids' attention for that long. The school has given him an outline of points to cover, but there's still some planning he has to do. How can he keep the presentation engaging but still informative? By the way, he's a civil engineer.

posted by trillian to education (7 comments total)

Bring pasta and do a pasta-bridge demonstration. Not build a full bridge, but just put together a little piece of bridge and hang something from it. Build a poorly-built bridge bit and show how even with though the amount past and amount of weight are the same, the strength differs. Explain that civil engineers learn principles that explain how best to place the pasta (and eventually concrete and metal beams!).

I would have thought that was way cool.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:11 AM on May 11

Bring a bucket of legos and make it 25 minutes "here are principles of (something) design, 20 minutes of "let's break into groups and build (somethings)" while I walk around and help you out. Point out strengths, weaknesses, etc.
posted by mikepop at 7:30 AM on May 11

Agreed. Keep the lecture brief and break it down into some small-group, hands-on activity as quickly as possible. Make sure you model it for them, however -- if you want to have them use legos to make a structure bearing bridge, for example, make sure you bring in a pre-made example that follows some of the lessons you want them to understand.

That would be the pedagogy 101 approach. And it's a good one.
posted by bardic at 7:35 AM on May 11

I did the middle school career day thing. I went on and showed some funny commercials I made and some cartoons. The lady after me showed some video of her days as a TV reporter. Then the Accountant came on with, ummm, spreadsheets. It wasn't pretty.

So, I would strongly recommend having an audio-visual component. The thought that came to my mind was grabbing some video of spectacular engineering failures: bridge collapses, building failures. Or conversely, structures that survived catastrophe.

Though mikepop's lego idea sounds cool, too.

Good luck. I loved doing it. It was fun.
posted by lpsguy at 7:47 AM on May 11

Does your husband have access to any surveying equipment? My husband, who is also a civil engineer, was a big hit with our daughter's 4th grade class when he took them outside and showed them surveying equipment. He did clear it with the teacher first, since he took them outside.

Another idea is to bring blueprints or plats of something they would be familiar with (their school?, their subdivision?) and show the kids how to read them.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 11:20 AM on May 11

(Dang, 45 minutes is a long time.)

If he's a civil engineer, the spaghetti-and-marshmallow-tower exercise would be good. You can make it into a contest by splitting the children into groups and see who had the tallest tower that can stand the longest, then a brief lesson in "why."

He can also bring overheads of photographs or a video of a bridge being built... or falling down. The Tacoma Narrows bridge is an excellent example. Again, talking about the "why" in a very simplified format.

Also I would talk about how much money can be made, that girls can be engineers, where CEs work, etc. Kids are pretty much only focused on earnings, in my experience with high school kids in architecture/construction/engineering. You don't have to be specific on the salary issue but just talk about what you can get with the money--nice house, car, etc. Talk about what it's taken to get you to that point, what you do every day, possible career paths. And many students are frightful of math, so explaining how much or little math comes into play would be a bonus.
posted by FergieBelle at 11:24 AM on May 11

I work with middle schoolers and please take the ideas of if I only had pasta and mike pop, which is mainly talk for a bit and then let them do something hands on.

I've also seen the pasta bridge done with bendy straws.

The hands-on activity will also allow you time to talk with any students who really are interested and have interesting questions to ask.
posted by aetg at 3:47 PM on May 11