When: March 10th, 8:59 a.m.
Where: Bertie Ledger-Advance (local paper in Bertie County, NC)
Barry Ward (staff writer): “Bertie County students got a chance to get a hands on feel of technology that helps others Friday. The Design Revolution Roadshow made a stop at schools across the county to show inventions designed to help humanity.”
Fruit market outside Windsor, NC (Bertie County)
On the porch of an abandoned house we want to buy and renovate, just outside of Bertie County, NC
The latest addition to our Airstream family – a 1958 Overlander. Yes, we bought a 2nd one in North Carolina.
When: March 7th, 9:35 a.m.
Where: Driving down highway 13 in Bertie County, NC
Emily: “I swear, the middle-of-nowhere is going to be the next big thing – the place where the most exciting things are happening.”
(On moving to rural NC and being excited to have space to think, work, build, teach, and have an impact.)
Stopping by Bertie High School to check on our third computer lab (designed and built by Project H), almost ready for use!
When: March 6th, 7:14 a.m.
Where: At the White Oak house, our home in Bertie County, NC
Matt: “Okay, I’m going to play with my second Airstream!”
(walking out the door to go pick up our new Airstream- and by “pick up,” we mean haul out of the mud if possible, and by “new,” we mean it’s new to us, but a 1960 fixer-upper, to say the least)
Junebug, our mascot, taking care of a puppy we found in the bushes behind the school (we found him a good home!)
We spent today in a place we know well, the Early College Ag High School in Bertie County, NC. Bertie County has been a second home for us this past year, home to four of our Learning Landscape math playgrounds, three computer labs we designed, and a slew of other design projects within the rural school district. Since we know some of the students and almost all the teachers, we were particularly excited to visit today and pick up some conversations where we had left off last time. On our last visit, we had spoken to the high school students about our work with Project H and primed them for our road show stop.
Our first order of business was to show my Colbert Report clip in class (above), to rev up some excitement around humanitarian design. Stephen Colbert’s humor seems to be universal- we haven’t had an audience that doesn’t end up laughing uncontrollably yet. The 20 or so students in Mr. Guard and Mr. Johnson’s classes were particularly excited to learn that the exact pair of glasses on Mr. Colbert’s face were the ones outside their door in the trailer. So with that we ventured out to the trailer exhibition, where Principal Peele from the adjacent Prep Academy and Superintendent Zullinger were waiting, already checking out the Hippo Roller (below).
As the day progressed, both shenanigans and inspiring discussions ensued. I was reminded how glad I am to have added high schools to our itinerary, as teenagers who have never considered design as a viable career come to the exhibition with open eyes and shrewd questions, seeing things we hadn’t considered.
Particularly here in Bertie, we viewed our visit as a teaser for the program we will be teaching this fall at the very same school. Studio H is a one-year design/build program for high school juniors, in which we’ll be teaching design thinking an construction skills to build one big community project per year. The work shown in the trailer gives some insight to students as to what a design process looks like, and what the impact of community-driven design work can be. To teach hands-on design skills in a place like Bertie, where hands-on agricultural work is legacy but creative problem solving is not taught in schools, is a truly exciting challenge for us.
We’re quite lucky to be working with the Bertie County School District for the long haul, and we can’t wait to get back here at the end of our trip to set up shop (literally) with the students we spent time with today. If you’d like to read more about Studio H, visit the page on the Project H site here, or watch the short video below.
Rollin’ down the rural roads of Bertie County, NC, on our way to Bertie Ag School