Great year for Mendota Jr. High MESA!

So far this year  Mesa has been very exciting. Most of the students are looking forward to the competitions, prelims, the Saturday academies, banquet, and for the trips we get to go to.

Our leadership team has been very successful in encouraging students to do their best we all try to set good examples for the rest of the students we’re all working very hard in getting things done and making commitments for Mesa. We’re hoping for a great interesting year with the students that have never been in Mesa.

Leadership Retreat

Once the school year began we had a parent night which was very successful in many ways we got the parents interested in Mesa and got them informed in what Mesa’s about and about how important it is for their children and how they get to attend four Saturday academies and about their career path. So far, we made bridges out of marshmallows and toothpicks. There was a small competition between students and their parents. We’ve had over 50 members so far.

 Parent Night

                
We were fundraising by selling chocolate boxes and selling stuff at a school dance. We also were giving prizes to the students that sold chocolate boxes. We sold things like chips, nachos, and popcorn etc.

 Prize Winners

                          
The first thing we got to work with was mechanical drafting for about five weeks. It was very challenging for most students but they still did their best. We also got to have competition working on windmill, which was very successful. Our next competition is bridges we’ve been working on them for about one week.

The first Saturday academy was fun everyone was excited and interested in what new activities there was this year although, most students were looking forward to going to the first three academies we had a lot of fun. Most students try to attend four Saturday academies. Everyone is getting prepared for prelims they’re all ready for competition. It takes a lot of work and commitment, but we could handle it. We hope to have a wonderful year in Mesa, and hope to join next year.

 

Saturday Academy Group

2nd & 3rd Saturday Acadmies

 

We've been busy at MESA the last month with our 2nd and 3rd Saturday Academies. Our 2nd Academy- held right before Thanksgiving- turned into a great day despite some morning rain. Middle school students built bridges, cars, boats, robots and more and also got to develop their leadership skills. High school students launched rockets, learned about electronics and engineering design, and built robots, in addition to learning about college and opportunities in engineering. Our 3rd Academy was just this past weekend, and it was another fun day. We were lucky to have an engineer come from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab to talk about her experiences with different missions. It was very cool to hear- first hand- about the exploration of outer space. All of our students also got to work on hands-on projects: from hot air balloons and gliders to lasers and earthquake engineering. Thanks to all the students, advisors, and volunteers who made each day possible. We're done with all our fall semester activities now, but are busy getting ready for our spring Academy and competitions!

Exciting year for Hoover MESA

Hoover Mesa is off to a great start this year. We have been busy getting as many members involved in Mesa as possible. We have more than 60 members enrolled this year with almost a fourth of them freshmen. We are excited to have Mr. Ureno as a new advisor. He joins Mrs. Denbesten and Mr. Bellis.

We have meetings every Tuesday at lunch. At the meetings we do little projects to get people excited for Saturday academies. We have done paper bridges and paper airplanes. We sign people up for Saturday academies and plan for future events. We had a work day over Thanksgiving break to work on our projects. We have also had study sessions for the SAT math portion. We are having a contest to design a new t-shirt for Hoover Mesa.

We have had almost all of our member go to at least one Saturday academy. At the latest one we had people place first and second in marble coasters, first in propeller boats, and first in calculus team math. We are planning to have a day to work on the online academy.