When Athletic Director David Laughlin invited me to Canon City High School, I was beyond excited. He was looking forward to sharing a new program that his students are working on. The program, SystemsGo, is an innovative high school rocketry/aeroscience curriculum that uses project-based learning to teach STEM skills, while developing skills in teamwork, problem-solving, and leadership. It also encourages careers in the engineering industries.
Now, you might be wondering why this is something that the CHSAA Activities administrator is looking at, here are a few things I look forward to:
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Sharing what our current activity offerings are about.
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Highlighting the activities that make each of our school’s places for students to love learning and growing, connecting with others, and cultivating skills (outside of the classroom) that will help them to be life-long learners and community contributors.
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Looking for new activities to bring under the CHSAA umbrella.
Student Leadership, Speech and Debate, and Music are the activities that CHSAA oversees that tend to be co-curricular on most campuses. Looking at the SystemsGo program as another offering would be another opportunity to bridge the classroom vs. after school activity chasm.
There are currently 14 Colorado high schools on board to start or grow their SystemsGo program. The U.S. Army (Fort Carson) has also expressed an interest in supporting schools who are part of this program, so it is definitely something that has piqued my curiosity.
Here are some of the basics of the program, as it is constructed at Canon City High School:
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It starts with students enrolling in a semester-long applied engineering class
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There is no prerequisite for students to be in the program
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The overall goal is to create a rocket that can fly 5280 feet high, carrying 1lb cubic payload
Laughlin stated, “Every high school that is able should seriously consider adopting this program into their curriculum. It is more than a class, it’s been a life changer for my students.” This is where CHSAA can be looking to add to our activities offerings- programs that grow students in a way that has them valuing the experience as something that they can incorporate into their futures.
Laughlin goes on to say that “all you really need to get this program started is computer access to CAD. You can add to your program as you grow it.” It does help that Colorado is a natural fit for programs like this, given our current aerospace posture.
The popularity of the program is HOT! Laughlin says that “it has gone from 0 to 100; faster than any other program in recent school history.” There are currently 55 students in the CCHS program, but they continue to look for ways to grow that number. And while engineering is still a male dominated field, Canon City’s team has found that they are disrupting this paradigm.
While students worked hard to meet last year’s goal, they are focused on this year’s goal of breaking the sound barrier. The current SystemsGo requirements are that student groups have only 13,500 feet of elevation in order to make this happen. Think about what that means. A group must design and build a rocket that breaks the sound barrier in less that 14,000 feet of elevation.
Canon City High School Principal Bill Summers, echoed the attributes of the program as he touted the leadership, communication, and team building skills that students gain. “As much as this program is about science, it’s about everything else,” said Summers.
Team Captain Dimitri Zamarripa talked about this being the best class he has ever taken, how much fun his teammates are, and how they all pour their heart into the rocket. “This team is family. While the group activities have helped us to grow close, it was our trip to Texas that brought us together,” said Zamarripa. The Texas trip was their opportunity to be at the SystemsGo facility, working to understand more about how to build and launch their rocket. Zamarripa went on to say, “We are really good at the math part of things because we want to be engineers. This program has helped us grow in so many other ways.”
We wish them the best as they look to grow their program.
Thank you to the students and staff for inviting me to Canon City High School.
To find out how to build your own program, email David Laughlin: david.laughlin@canoncityschools.org
To find out more about SystemsGo: www.SystemsGo.org