1st Saturday Academy

Thanks to all students, advisors, and volunteers who participated in our first Saturday Academy of the year! We had about 500 middle and high school students from around the Central Valley on the Fresno State campus for the event. After taking a math test, our students worked on some great projects- including rockets, robots, solar ovens, bridges, soldering, and more.

We're always amazed to see how much creativity and hard work goes into each project. Thanks to our college student volunteers and advisors who helped run all of the sessions and to our MESA student leaders who served as mentors and helpers throughout the day. Now we're looking forward to our next Academy, which is going to be on November 20.

A Busy Start

This past moth has been pretty busy for MESA here at Dinuba High School.  We have had some small in club competitions to try and make the tallest tower out of a piece of paper and a couple of inches of tape. We all had lots of fun.  And also, thanks to Kristin, we had fun doing a boat competition where we had to make a boat and see how many pennies it could hold.

 

Besides the small competitions, we also put together two types of robots, a lego robot and a VEX robot.  We all enjoyed putting them together and had a good time just being with each other.  During our Club Fair, we used the VEX robot as advertisement and there was many people who thought it was cool and are considering joining us soon.

  

We had a bit of trouble trying to sign everyone up for the Saturday Academies but had  success in the number of people going compared to last year.  We have put together the design for our shirts and we all can't wait for them to get here.  Maybe all of you guys will be able to see them at the next Saturday Academy.  We also are looking forward to our amazing trips planned to go and visit colleges.  Also, one of our members is trying to get Burt Rutan to come and speak to our community.  If he agrees, it would be a wonderful experience for all of us.  He is an aerospace engineer from here in Dinuba that is known for designing the Voyager.  Well, can't wait to read all of the different MESA blogs.

Go Rafer MESA!

The MESA Club and elective class at Rafer Johnson Jr. High has been up to a lot lately. We sponsored a back-to-school dance as our main fundraiser for the year. Hard-working MESA students planned the dance, made posters and flyers, painted decorations, and set up for the dance. The dance theme was a pajama party (Pajammin' Dance), and students came dressed in their pajamas, ate snacks hung out with friends, and many students also participated in a pillow fight competition inside a bounce house! The dance raised over $1,500 for Rafer's MESA program.

Currently, we have been working on building bridges. Preparation for our bridges included taking Cornell notes on bridge design and forces acting on a bridge, as well as working on building spaghetti bridges. Students learned the two major scientific causes of bridge failure; compression and tension. We look forward to a visit from the CSU Fresno MESA staff next week, when our bridge specifications will be checked and they will be tested for strength. We will figure out which bridges will win the competition by plugging the numbers into a formula to find the strength-to-weight ratio.

We have also been working on getting all of our MESA students enrolled on line and signing up for our first Saturday Academy. It took awhile to get everybody signed up with the new system, but we were able to get a lot of help from Mr. Lopez, Ms. McCoy, and Ms. Prieto, and now we are happy to say that all of our elective students have completed their registration and are signed up for the first Saturday Academy. Most students are excited to pick their own workshops this year, and we look forward to seeing the MESA students from other schools, learning new things in workshops, and eating in the student union.

In the near future, Rafer MESA students will join together with MESA students from Kingsburg High School to participate in an astronomy field trip with Mr. Harness. Ten 8th graders from our class are also looking forward to the upcoming Catalina Island Marine Institute trip in November. We have submitted a t-shirt idea to a printer, and we will hopefully have our Rafer MESA t-shirts ready soon. Go, Rafer MESA!