BOCES is a school mainly for students who want to go into a profession that requires training outside of the normal school setting to pursue. It’s a great program for students to have opportunities that they wouldn’t be able to get sitting in a classroom. They can get more hands-on experience with jobs they are interested in such as plumbing, construction, law enforcement, or cosmetology.
Every year, BOCES hosts a student innovation fellowship where students work in groups to examine a problem they find prevalent in their school community. They are then walked through the process of design engineering with BOCES staff members to prepare them for a twenty minute presentation given at the end of the fellowship. The presentation is attended by administration, family, and community members and it is a chance for the students involved to show off all of the work they put in over the various sessions they attended.
After each session the groups are assigned homework, for example, empathy mapping, interviews, and shadowing employees. Two groups from Rhinebeck High School are enrolled in the fellowship and they go to BOCES five times before the presentation. Monica Zimmers is the teacher in charge. When interviewed she said she wanted to get Rhinebeck involved in the program to help kids obtain the knowledge necessary for the workforce today. “If you ask any employer out there, what do they want kids to be able to do? They never say, I want them to be able to factor quadratics. It’s always these 21st century skills, they need to be able to collaborate and communicate, creatively and innovatively. The design thinking process addresses all of those things.”
When Zimmers was recruiting students the first draw may have been the promise of missing five days of school over four months. Soon after enrolling, many of the students found that the fellowship is incredibly fun as well as educational. “I think the fellowship is a very unique opportunity to explore something outside of the school” said Sabine Terranova, a sophomore participating in the food waste group in the fellowship.
Another student, Ali Stephan, enjoys the chance to collaborate with fellow peers: “My favorite part of the BOCES fellowship really is how we work together and try to solve a problem within our school and I think our ideas are really good.”
The end of the project led to final presentations where students were able to share their ideas with administration from their school. Winnie Wang, a student participating said, “the presentation was a bit scary at first because we had a big audience but it was really good that we were able to get it done because we got really good feedback and now we can make a change in our school.”
Overall, the program was a big success in getting kids interested in innovation as well as making it fun and engaging.
