Digital Design Club
Digital Design Club
There wasn’t a design club at my school, so I wrote a proposal, found a teacher to sponsor it, and started recruiting before the year began.
I was going into eighth grade. I ran it on my own, and I wanted it small enough to teach properly.
Most of them were sixth graders. Nearly half had never used a design tool or called themselves beginners.
Before the first meeting existed, the club needed to look like something worth walking into. I made all of it.
Across fourteen presentations and one school year. I wrote every one of them.
I surveyed the club three times, and changed it after every one.
After each unit I asked my students what was working, what they wanted more of, and what they wanted to learn next. Every answer went straight into the calendar.
Here is what they asked for, and what I changed.
In March I ran a competition, and my students built things I could not have made at their age.
Fourteen students submitted a final project against a shared rubric. Every piece below is published with that student’s written permission, and credited the way they asked to be credited.
The last meeting, March 25. The whole club came, and every single response to the final survey said they would recommend it.
Read the full letter→“One of the most outstanding student leaders I have had the privilege to work with.”
Talton Edmond Sr.
CTE Instructor and Digital Design Club Advisor
Fort Settlement Middle School
Fort Settlement had no design club until I wrote the proposal. A year later it had seventy-one applicants, a full calendar, a room of students making real work, and its own page in the yearbook. Dulles did not start from an idea. It started from a program that had already run a full year, with the lessons written, the briefs tested and the rubric proven.
We meet every other Friday after school at Dulles High School, sponsored by Profe De La Cruz. Anyone in grades nine through twelve can join, and no experience is needed.