(Oh dear, starting this at 6 AM back at MIT. It’s been a while, but hopefully my memory serves me well!)
Day 9 meant… FINAL PROJECTS!!
To make operations as smooth as possible, we had spent much of the day before reorganizing the classroom. Two 3D printers accompanied by soldering irons sat towards the front of the classroom, a table laden with silicone molds and opaque containers of epoxy stood to the side, and the back of the classroom was taken over by the electronics. I think our students were a little confused when they walked, so it was a little quiet that morning.
It hit me that we didn’t have much long left with the students.
Much of Day 9 was a blur—there was a frenzy to get things started. We had Kathy and James working with Sarah on their electronic cars, who also happened to be helping Ashily with the multi-colored Arduino-powered “mood sensor.” Emily painstakingly created another iteration of Doraemon on TinkerCad. Anna S. worked on her rechargeable flashlight (unfortunately there were issues with the motor so it became a photosensitive flashlight instead) with Lexi, who worked out the kinks of the robotic arms with Cindy and Daniel. Kitty calmly drew a diagram of a dissected frog. In the front there was Lulu, the epoxy master, guiding Mark (Dr. Na), Michelle and Grace on the art of pouring and mixing epoxy.
I felt bad because Grace was originally supposed to work on both the epoxy and an Arduino piano, but we didn’t have time to work on both.
In the meanwhile, I coaxed Anna T. into tackling the nutrient film hydroponics system, while also reviewing special relativity with George Washington. He spent hours looking up videos of the train paradox, the speed of light, the twin paradox, and time dilation/length contraction.
As much as we had tried to reduce chaos through planning and changing the layout, it was still fairly hectic. All the windows and doors had to be opened to accommodate the epoxy fumes and the soldering smoke. There were stray resistors, wires, capacitors floating around. Sometimes the hydroponics system with its hand pump spilled and needed to be mopped up. Lexi and Sarah did another Daiso run to get glitter and poster board for the presentations. As everyone was in the zone we ended up tossing all the “brain break” slides we prepared in case people got bored.
And then suddenly, time for cleanup. The school had planned a parent-teacher event for that evening, and we were instructed to tidy up everything and make the classroom look the way it did on the first day. I had been dreading this, since it meant that the final projects would be disrupted—but the students neatly packed away their projects into the kitchen and helped out in stacking the chairs and tables, sweeping the floors, throwing away the rubbish, and generally transforming the room into… an empty classroom.
We handed away the Google cardboards, drones, spectroscopes, and spare Arduinos. The hydroponics lamps. The clay and the colored pens. Even now, I am amazed at how all those materials had fit into our suitcases on the way here from Cambridge.
Once we were done, we stood for a moment dumbfounded at how different the place looked, with no trace of the past two weeks.
After which, we went down to Myeongdong to have a final dinner with the students. Our students looked so carefree, happily chatting away in Korean and Chinese while we teachers trailed behind. In the bustling streets lit up with millions of LEDs and resounding with BTS music, they looked right at home.
GTL Korea 2020 