Light the Way
I had the opportunity of being in the Light the Way intensive the first quarter, where I built a lantern for a student at Aurora Hills Middle School. At the beginning of the intensive, all students traveled to the middle school where we met with our students. Mine was a girl named Natalia Munguea. She moved to Colorado from Guadalajara, Mexico two years ago with her mom, dad and two siblings. I interviewed her during this trip to get to know her, asking her about her life, interests, family, sports, friends and school. The challenging part to this interview was that I needed to talk to her in her native language, Spanish. While talking to her, what stuck out to me the most was how much her family impacts her life and specifically how much she misses her grandmother. Her grandmother still lives in Guadalajara, Mexico, where Natalia and her family moved from. Since her grandmother lives far away Natalia wants to see her again in the future. After meeting Natalie, we got back to school and my next step in this project was to build her a lantern. I built a cuboctahedron, which consists of 8 equilateral triangles, and 6 squares. To build the lantern I had to learn how to solve problems using 1D, 2D and 3D shapes. I used balsa wood in which I cut all the pieces, glued them together, build the shape, attach a battery and light bulbs for electricity, and cover it in tissue paper. I covered it in blue and black tissue paper because her favorite color is black. To allow the lantern to light up, I developed an understand of the qualities of charge, currents, voltage, resistance, and the connections among them. I learned how electricity works and how to wire a lantern with a battery pack.
The last major part of the project was writing a vignette about or inspired by our student. I wrote a vignette inspired by what she told me about her grandmother. My story started out in Mexico, and moved on to moving to America and finally moving back to Mexico to reunite with her grandmother. This was the most powerful learning experience for me this year because I got to learn all about different cultures and how different they are from mine. I was able to do something for someone else in my community rather than focusing a project on myself. I enjoyed basing a project off of someone in my community and being able to do something for them that hopefully they will enjoy for a long time.
light_the_way_portfolio.pdf |
visual_vignette_with_words.pdf |