Mendenhall Middle state champs
If you've ever worked for a big company, you certainly have had one of those "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" moments. Well, I had one of those Friday.
I went out to Mendenhall Middle School and reported a story on the school's state champion Future City team. Future City requires students to design and plan their own mock city, using both computer simulations and 3D models.
Just completing a Future City project requires a ton of brain power and even more hard work. That Mendenhall was able to beat out private and magnet schools from across the state and represent North Carolina in the national finals is newsworthy.
It turns out that People & Places reporter Tina Firesheets thought so too. Tina does a great job of finding local news, so it doesn't surprise me that she was interested in the Mendenhall story. What I didn't know is that she had already been out to the school and written her own excellent story. You can read it here.
But since her story was written and ready to go, mine wasn't needed. It's the first time in five years at the News & Record that something like this has happened to me. Weird things happen on a Friday afternoon, I guess.
Rather than let my story go into the electronic wasteland, though, I thought I would post it here. After all, a writer is pretty useless without an audience:
By Bruce Buchanan
Staff writer
GREENSBORO - You won't find city of Roccia Citta on any map, but it is inhabited by a dozen hard-working students and one proud teacher.
Roccia Citta is the creation of students from Mendenhall Middle for the Future City Competition, an annual event. The project earned the Mendenhall team a state championship and a trip to Washington for the national finals.
In Future City, students assume the role of civil engineers. They design and build futuristic cities, using both 3-D scale models and computer simulations. They also must write a report and give an oral presentation to a group of professional engineers. Students started work in August, meeting at least three times a week after school.
"To me, the best part is them being on stage answering tough questions," said Garriot Rose, a Mendenhall science teacher and the Future City team advisor. "They have to think on their feet."
The scale model of Roccia Citta - "It's Italian for 'Rock City,'" said team member Rebecca Kabatchnick - sits in the Mendenhall library, along with the state championship trophy. Students used packing peanuts to make boats and turned an old air filter into a power plant.
Eighth-grader Paul Mott said making a plaster of Paris mountain was the toughest challenge.
"It was really messy, but it was fun," he said.
In order to win the state title, Mendenhall had to beat out a field of mostly private schools and science/math magnet schools. This is only the school's second year competing.
Other team members are Malika Malhotra, Alyssa Young, Lindsay Jackson, Olivia Di Dio, Meredith Pate, Paige Vaughan, Chandler Horney, Ricky Stone and Scott Hollandsworth. Team member Kris Ashburn moved to Ohio, but came back for the national competition.
Contact Bruce Buchanan at 373-7078 or bbuchanan@news-record.com
Comments (1)
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Two reports on such a positive achievement by our local students is nothing to be ashamed of! I wish we saw this type of exciting news more often. Along that line of thought, NWMS varisty and jv science olympiad teams took first place in the regionals and NWMS took 2nd place. Another great competition was the Battle of the Books held at Penn-Griffin on Friday. Thirteen middle schools competed in a day long battle to show their knowledge of a collection of 27 books. Not sure who won, since we had to leave early to catch the bus back to our school! Great behavior and sportsmanship was shown by all!
Posted on March 14, 2005 5:07 PM