West Fairmont Middle students learn about the science of 'productive failure'
May 27—FAIRMONT — Kids and pool noodles are a common sight at 12th Street Pool, but cardboard and duct tape are new additions.
Thursday afternoon, students from West Fairmont Middle School walked down Chamberlain Avenue to East West Stadium and gathered in a crowd around the pool for a new activity conceptualized by the school's sixth grade math and science teacher, Sean Hoskinson.
Every homeroom class was given two flats of cardboard, a roll of duct tape and two pool noodles to build a boat that could support two students and float from one end of 12th Street Pool to the other, lengthwise.
"We do STEM and STEAM all throughout the school year, and with us having a MCPARC facility like this so close to us and to have MCPARC work with us it's just great," Hoskinson said. "This gave the kids a chance to design something, to engineer something and to build and to be successful, I thought it was a good idea to have a trial run."
Each grade came one by one down the street to watch their homeroom's designated boat captains attempt to sail the length of the pool. Some boats fared better than others, but most ended up sinking just a few feet away from the starting wall.
For this game, if a captain's feet hit the floor of the pool after setting sail, it was marked as a sink.
Despite the captains hardly making it out of the shallow end of the pool, that didn't stop their classmates from laughing, cheering and clapping for their sailors.
One group, captained by seventh grader Darrius Cain, opted for more of a raft design, with the noodles cut up and taped to the underside of the flat and folded cardboard pieces.
Darrius and his co-captain didn't make it too far into the pool, but their raft got a laugh out of his classmates.
"Our boat went for a flat raft design, but we had many troublesome things going on with our boat," Darrius said. "If I could do it again, I think I just wouldn't build that boat."
While some of the designs may have resulted in several quick sinks, some had other issues.
"Our boat had holes everywhere, and it kind of sucked," seventh grader Ranz Hintz said. "If I could do it again, I'd make it without the holes."
While this may have looked like a fun activity to fill a school day at the end of the year, the students where learning even when they didn't realize it. The creativity, the perseverance, the teamwork and group skills all came into play in this challenge.
But the most important lesson learned was dealing with and accepting failure and understanding that it's normal to fall short sometimes. Sailing a ship made of cardboard and duct tape across an Olympic-sized swimming pool is nearly an impossible task, but many of these students may find themselves giving it another go next year.
Marion County School Superintendent Donna Heston attended a portion of the event Thursday and was impressed by the students and their ingenuity.
"We saw some real good examples today of productive failure and a lot of enthusiasm around it too. We want students to make theories and test their designs and work to avoid it not working," Heston said. "But if they do fail, it's neat to see the approaches of the students and how they prepare for that."
As the summer approaches, Heston and Hoskinson hope that when these students visit the pool for leisure in a month or two, they remember their cardboard boats and their minds start to center on learning again, even if just for a few minutes.
Reach David Kirk at 304-367-2522 or by email at dkirk@timeswv.com.
