Kealakehe High School GEER Final Report
Project with Small Business of Non-Profit in the Community
September 30, 2022
| Name of School: | Kealakehe High School | Principal’s Name: | Dr, James Denight |
| Name of Person Completing the Report: |
Bill Chen | Job Title: |
Vice Principal |
| Name of your project: | Tiny Home Project | Name(s) of your partner(s): |
Students worked with local architects, such as Sean Roth, to create tiny homes for the local community. We took students to the location for them to see what it could look like. Students worked in teams to build models based off of design constraints. Afterwards, students shared their model and their design with local community members to receive feedback. After receiving feedback, students improved their design, and shared their models out.
- Collaborating with community partners allowed students to receive authentic feedback from real architects, electricians, etc.
- Students were highly engaged in the process and enjoyed being able to see their project go from start to finish.
- Students being placed in teams allowed students to understand habits of highly effective teams, and what it took for teams to work well together. There were a lot of debriefs where students learned about how they work well (or not so well) in teams.
List two or three challenges:
- Design constraints pushed students to think outside of the box. It was a challenge that motivated students to find innovative solutions.
- Supply chain issues affected some student projects and their ability to create a model. It taught students some of the real-life constraints of supply chain issues in Hawai’i.
A lesson learned was to involve more end users of the product. I think it would have benefitted students if they could interview people who would have lived in the tiny homes. Being able to work with industry partners allowed students to get real feedback, and also made them more aware that they needed to seek more feedback from the people who would end up living in the tiny homes. Input for the house design, practicality of certain appliances, and prioritization of resources would have deepened student understanding of how to match product with the need.
Students had more interest in the Early College classes that we offer in partnership with UH Manoa and Palamanui Community College. We needed to fill up some of those classes in order for them to be able to run the classes, so diluting students into more Early College classes could have meant that fewer students had the opportunity to take them.