The Crookston High School’s Community Projects class has produced another project for the school, with the hard work of one student. Crookston High School student Isaac Wandrie created a sign that lists the six motivational words that match an anagram of the word Pirate and hung it on a wall in the commons area by the kitchen.
The Crookston School District has created a mantra of motivational words to inspire the students to do their best every day and has printed it out as an anagram with a specific word for each letter in the word Pirate. The High School tasked Community Projects Teacher Travis Oliver to turn the anagram from a printed page that they posted all over the school into a more permanent addition to the school. “That’s something of a mantra that we want to peruse as a school, within not only the High School but also Highland and Washington School together using the already established Pirate word, which is our mascot towards that goal,” said Oliver. “There have been sheets of paper around the school, posted on doors, on classroom doors, and inside classrooms. This is another extension of that. In a much larger and more visible area on what was previously an empty wall in our commons area.”
Oliver offered the project as one of the assignments they could complete for his course, which caused Isaac to accept and complete the project. “Some of the challenges I had was that during the CNC process for all the meanings, at some point, we lost the bit, so we had to use a duller one. Which caused fibers to pop out, and the wood we used was plywood, which created the problem of fibers popping up. I had to either cover them up or sand it off, and I can’t get all of it sanded, but I was able to get most of it,” said Wandrie. “Another problem was putting it up, deciding what to do and how to do it. In the end, we decided to line it up with the “P,” so it should be completely lined up from where the “P” starts to the bottom left of the “E.” And when I put it up, the “A” was bigger than everything else, so originally it was going to be closer to the other letters, but we had to space it out to keep uniformity,”
With the project complete, Oliver mentioned that he would like to see the sign replicated for other parts of the High School and the other schools in the district. “A long-term goal would be to have a couple of these around the high school and maybe a couple in Highland,” said Oliver. “Whether that’s a reality this year or down the road, this one is a prototype, and it went well. Isaac did a nice job, and the proof is on the wall. So, the long-term goal would be we got this down, and now we can replicate this and make the next level.” Oliver plans to have multiple signs in locations throughout the High School, such as in the Locker Rooms and hallways, to remind students of the environment they want created at the school and things they can do to succeed.
The Community Projects class has many more projects planned for the year ahead, one being a new desk for the school to collect admissions for basketball games. Others are ones that the class is keeping secret until the time is right for each project to be revealed. We will be checking back in with Oliver and the other students once their projects are complete.
