Jeff Govoni:
So what we did is we go online to a few of these adoption centers that have cats and dogs. And if you’ve ever been on these things, they just basically have biographies of all the dogs and all the cats that are there for adoption. And I mean, if you could have been in our rooms when we showed these little biographies, they have names, they have hobbies, it’s just the kids were falling over, rolling around, “Oh.” It was crazy. Just nuts. We could have done it all day. I literally think we could have done it all day. It was a great soft launch. So they were in, that was it. It was off. I talk about a launch. It was off. They were fired up.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton. And that was the voice of Jeff Govoni, who teaches fifth grade at High Tech Elementary Point Loma. I interviewed Jeff on the first day of deeper learning by a PBL, a class I teach with Stacy Lopez as part of High Tech High’s Teacher Credentialing program. In this class, students each design their own project and because one of the core practices of PBL is learning by studying models of excellence, we launched the course by inviting a teacher to come in and talk about an awesome project that they’ve done. For this class, Jeff told us about a project he and his fifth grade colleagues did last year in which students designed and built dog houses and cat condos for animal seeking adoption. You’ll hear my interview first and then some questions from the audience. Let’s get into it.
Jeff Govoni, fifth grade teacher at High Tech Elementary Point Loma, thank you so much for joining us. Everybody in the crowd, shout to the folks at home can hear you.

Audience:
Whoo!

Alec Patton:
So I want to get started with where does the story of the Cause for Pause project start for you?

Jeff Govoni:
Okay. It starts with a fourth grade teacher a couple years earlier, actually, probably six or seven years ago now, but this is where the seed was planted, built dog houses, but they built them from a kit, which is fine. But I just remember thinking the potential for that project and to make those dog houses have an authentic ending, where they end up, could be tied in with any kind of adoption agency. And then I didn’t think about it for years. I got caught up in other projects.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. But you have this kind of thing in the back of your mind of, we could do something really cool with this. How did that thread get picked up? Again?

Jeff Govoni:
I felt like I just had to have the right place and the right colleagues. So I think as you go through your career, so many things impact what project you’re doing and who you’re working with. So it was always in the back of my mind and when I throw it out at my new colleagues last year, they seemed pretty excited about it and kind of had some great ideas themselves and then we were off and running.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. Let’s get really specific though. You said it was a little bit having the right group. What happened? When did the phrase we could build dog houses, how did it happen?

Jeff Govoni:
We were gaming possible projects last year ago summer, and it was in my head. I said, I’m going to throw it out to them and just tell them a little bit about my experience. I had had some success doing owl boxes a few years back when I taught in Chula Vista. So I felt like this was just kind of a glorified owl box. Turned out to be a little more complicated than that. So I just kind of threw it out there and I said, “I think it could be a really cool, really authentic product.” And they went with it.

Alec Patton:
All right. And when you say in the summer, was this an end-of-year thing? Were you guys just all hanging out at the beach? Was this a PD thing? What was going on?

Jeff Govoni:
It was very beginning of the year in my recollection, day one or two of-

Alec Patton:
You didn’t have a lot of runway then?

Jeff Govoni:
Not really, no.

Alec Patton:
So you had this idea, you were like, let’s build dog houses and this is the other fifth grade teachers. The other fifth grade teachers were like, “Yeah, that sounds cool.” And you were like, “Well, great, kids are going to be back in four days.”

Jeff Govoni:
So fortunately I think they were just naive enough that they didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be.

Alec Patton:
So I’m curious, did you prototype?

Jeff Govoni:
I did a cardboard and then a balsa wood prototype before pitching it to the students.

Alec Patton:
And what else did you do before the launch? What did you have locked down and figured out before the launch and what were you like, “Oh, we’ll figure that out as we go”?

Jeff Govoni:
I think what I loved before the launch that we had figured out and they helped with this idea is we had decided that we would do a pet adoption event for exhibition and we would do it at Liberty Station. And when we would get some of these pet adoption places to come over to Liberty Station, bring their dogs and cats, and then we would bring our cat condos and our dog houses out there and anyone who came and adopted a cat or a dog that day could optionally bring home any one of the dog houses, the cat condos we built.

Alec Patton:
Got it. So you’re kind of sweetening the deal.

Jeff Govoni:
So that got me pretty excited that that plan, I was like, “That’s perfect. That’s a perfect plan.”

Alec Patton:
I have to say, as a parent, I would be so mad about this exhibition.

Jeff Govoni:
I did start warning parents with emails. I did. I really did. Just, they’re going to want a cat. They’re going to want a dog. Get ready. Sorry, I don’t know what to tell you. Be ready. They’re going to want to. And a few did get one.

Alec Patton:
I’m sure they did. It wasn’t just like we’re building a dog house for an imaginary dog. There was a clear audience for this.

Jeff Govoni:
Or even your family or… Yeah, clear audience. Yep.

Alec Patton:
How far into the year did you wait before you launched?

Jeff Govoni:
I think we launched about a month in, and I remember myself being kind of antsy, but-

Alec Patton:
You wanted to launch sooner?

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah, they wanted to do all these intelligent things like curriculum and things like that. And I just wanted to launch.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. Going back to that, before you launched, what was your biggest hope and biggest fear?

Jeff Govoni:
I think my biggest fear was, for some reason I felt confident in doing the dog houses, but I had no idea about a cat condo and how that would work. So I remember just faking it till I make it kind of attitude with that. But I was very excited. I had done other construction projects in the past and I knew that the students were going to be really excited for this idea and knowing what our soft and hard launch were going to be, I thought that they were going to be really excited too.

Alec Patton:
Why do you need a cat condo? Why not just be like, “This is a project about dogs, we’re going to adopt dogs”? Done.

Jeff Govoni:
You always think about the kids and there’s going to be kids who are going to be just as excited about cats I think as dogs. And so I like that idea, that challenge.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. What were you hoping kids were going to learn from doing this?

Jeff Govoni:
The writing and the reading is I think always easy to game once you have a good idea and a good subject because the kids were really excited, so we knew that they could do a lot of writing around the topic of a dog or a cat. And obviously a lot of reading too. That part always feels easy. I like construction projects because they kind of get at more math standards than perhaps other products.

Alec Patton:
And just for people who don’t build things, tell us a little bit more about where the math comes in.

Jeff Govoni:
Sure. For fifth grade you have a lot of measurement sort of standards that come right in, even if it’s learning the metric system as well as our regular system. There’s some conversions there. Another standard that’s important is turning two-dimensional things into three-dimensional nets. So we do a little of that when we’re prototyping. There’s a lot of volume that you can do, a lot of geometry that you can do that meets fifth grade standards to name a few.

Alec Patton:
Were you converting between metric and Imperial in this project?

Jeff Govoni:
Not during, no.

Alec Patton:
Yeah, I was going to say that’s…

Jeff Govoni:
We focus strictly on the inch system, literally practicing measuring in the classroom and so forth. But then later on in the year when you’re not doing the project, then you can bring in the metric system and look at the… because they’ve hopefully mastered our system.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. And we will talk more about the measurement thing. I know from any of your article there’s some interesting stuff about that. All right. So you mentioned the hard launch and a soft launch. So what came first?

Jeff Govoni:
The soft launch because we thought that would get them excited. So what we did is we lined up a few gone online, a few of these adoption centers that have cats and dogs. And if you’ve ever been on these things, they just basically have biographies of all the dogs and all the cats that are there for adoption. And if you could have been in our rooms when we showed these little biographies, they have names, they have hobbies, it’s just the kids were falling over, rolling around, “Oh.” It was crazy. Just nuts. We could have done it all day. I literally think we could have done it all day. It was a great soft launch. So they were in, that was it. It was off. I talk about a launch, it was off, they were fired up.

Alec Patton:
And were you building with specific animals in mind or were you making more generic dog houses?

Jeff Govoni:
We thought about doing that, but we didn’t. It was just too much. So Generic, but not generic in that they were uniquely designed every one of them. So no one was the same, which made it really easy.

Alec Patton:
So let’s get into how the kids made their designs. We started talking a little bit about prototyping. So what was the process?

Jeff Govoni:
We start by just draw a doghouse, what do you think a doghouse is? And then you kind of do a little bit of critiquing where the kids will show their doghouse and other students might ask questions or do a quick, kind of specific and helpful sort of comment. Like, “I love that you have a roof, but did you think about having a door?” Things like that. Just to get them kind of in.
And then you transition to giving them some cardboard. And along the way, we of course looked at dog houses, got online, look up some cool dog houses, look up some cool kitty condos, and then you start giving them some cardboard or some card stock is what I usually use. They’re not really building to scale yet, they’re just trying to make the one that they think is cool. And then you transition towards making plans and then moving toward. We went all the way to balsa wood, which I can talk about.

Alec Patton:
Yeah.

Jeff Govoni:
I love balsa wood if you’re going to do construction because it’s mimics two by fours and it mimics two by twos. If you really look at a set of balsa wood, it’s like a miniature Home Depot. It’s almost like a dollhouse Home Depot stuff. I really push them. Their final mini is balsa wood and it will have the frame and the frame will be built the same way that they will build the frame when they do the construction outside with the real wood. And for me, that’s been a trick over the years that I’ve gotten so much bang for that the students really, I feel like are ready to build it because they made the balsa wood one. The glue is the nail, that’s the only thing. I mean, wherever they put glue is where they’re putting nails. It’s kind of the way we do it.

Alec Patton:
And so let’s talk a little bit about how you’re doing critique at this point. I think one of the things that teachers who are new to PBL, I think a mistake that often gets made is you go like, “Hey, you have a thing. You have a thing. Go critique each other’s thing. Tell them what to change. I’ll see you in 10 minutes.” How did you scaffold it and structure it?

Jeff Govoni:
Because you always have a group that’s ahead, that group though isn’t always ahead because they’re doing it good. So I often try to take the group that’s ahead, stop everybody… So for example, when we were making our frames, just the base for the dog houses, those groups. One group got way ahead, they didn’t do it right. I can’t remember why. There was something screwed up about it, but that doesn’t matter. What’s great about critique is it doesn’t have to be exemplary. What you want is for it to be noticed if something’s wrong.
So the groups that are ahead, I usually get in front of the class, I kind of pause everybody. In my brain, it’s going to be 10 minutes, it usually takes a little bit longer. And I just ask them to take a look at what this group has done, what do you see, what do you think? Remember to be kind. So again, they’ll start out, they’ll say something kind about what they’re looking at, and then they’ll say what they notice, like a specific noticing like, “Hey, I noticed there’s a crack in your main board. Maybe you want to consider reapplying that.”

Alec Patton:
And oh, and I should have asked the groups. So initially kids are like, they’re drawing and then they’re building a cardboard and then they’re building the balls. But at what point did they stop working individually and start working in groups?

Jeff Govoni:
Great question. When we left the card stock and moved. By then they have their groups. And when you get into the balsa wood, that’s who your partner is because now you’ve made what is your final design.

Alec Patton:
And so it was groups of two?

Jeff Govoni:
Two and three.

Alec Patton:
Two and three.

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah.

Alec Patton:
And how did you make those groups?

Jeff Govoni:
In this case, I mostly let them choose and that’s definitely, I go back and forth from project to project. But I knew the motivation would be there, so I figured even the hardest of challenges when it came to two students working together that might not be the most productive. I thought that they would come through just because of the desire to do it.

Alec Patton:
Got it. And so the kind of trade-offs that you’re seeing is the upside is if kids can work with their friends, then that’s kind of exciting. The downside is your friends aren’t as… Yeah.

Jeff Govoni:
It can flop.

Alec Patton:
Yeah.

Jeff Govoni:
I think when you have high motivation, you have a better opportunity to have students work with who they want. If it’s more challenging what they have to do or just the motivation might not be as high, I think I’m going to be picking groups more.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. And did you have a concern that there were going to be kids who other people just didn’t want to work with?

Jeff Govoni:
Yes, there’s always that.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. How do you handle that?

Jeff Govoni:
That’s why there’s groups of three.

Alec Patton:
Right.

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah, sometimes.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. I’m guessing that you go to a couple kids who are going to be kind of okay with it and you’re like, “Look, is it cool if they…”

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah. They always feel bad when you do it. I think they’ll say yes, so going to… And obviously I think the student I’m bringing to them will benefit from being in the group, but I’m not guessing that they’re dying to have that student in their group.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. And then you had a situation where there were a couple kids who they had different designs and tell us about that pair.

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah, it was weird. I had a couple students leave in the middle of the project, their parents moved or whatever the reasons were. So I ended up with one student losing their partner. They were making a cat condo and one student losing the partner and they were making a dog house and we were already getting nervous about how many products we had. So we made the decision, we need to make them work together, which immediately, the problem was one of them is a cat person, one of them is a dog person. And we had to ask these two boys to come together and make a plan like, which way do you want to go?

Alec Patton:
What happened?

Jeff Govoni:
This is the best. I was really worried about it. I’m like, “This is really unfair to even ask them.” But we were feeling cheap and we were getting worried about the product. We just had too many products and we knew it. We had too many dog house and too many cat condos. Anyway, they came up with this idea that I never saw coming. They were just going to do a combo. So they were just going to stick the cat condo on top of the dog house and they called it a combo. It’s going to be a combo. So I just thought it was great. And they did do it. They just didn’t end up doing the full cat condo plans. They just kind of did a simple sort of cat, couple cat ideas on top of the dog house. But it was great. Great idea by them.

Alec Patton:
That’s awesome. And as I recall there, they had a scale issue too, right?

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah. Thank you for reminding me. So the boy who did the cat condo did it either on a half inch or a one-inch scale. I can’t remember which was which. One of them did it on a half-inch scale, and one of them did it on a one-inch scale. And because they were deciding to build, both of them just one was going to go on top of the other, they were nervous about, well, will it work if we have two different scales? And I just watched. I watched them talk about it. I didn’t intervene and I actually walked away. And in my brain I’m like, “God, I hope they decide just to have one scale or the other.”
But of course, it doesn’t really matter, and that is the conclusion they came to. As long as the cat boy stuck to his scale when they built it, and the dog person stuck to their scale when they built it, it should come out right, which is pretty good for a 1 0-year-old to kind of figure out that we don’t actually have to combine them. I don’t know. It still made me nervous. I don’t know why, but they did it.

Alec Patton:
And another thing that you do that I thought was interesting is that you said kids will work stuff out wrong and they’ll ask you to cut it for them and you’ll just do what they told you to do.

Jeff Govoni:
Yes, because you only have to do it a little bit at the beginning. So they’ll measure terribly. I mean, really bad sometimes, just so bad. Sometimes I just don’t even understand what could have happened. The lines are not straight. There’s so many things. But I will cut it wrong and give it back to them because visually, they just see it, how far off it is. And once you bring that in front of the class and let it get critiqued, it just sends up the red flag to all the groups to pay attention a lot more when they measure.

Alec Patton:
How do you kind of protect kids’ emotional well-being when they’re bringing their screwed up stuff in front of the class and some fifth grader might have theirs, you’d be like, “Are you an idiot? Look at that? How’s that…

Jeff Govoni:
It doesn’t sound like that. That’s all. And I don’t know if I always successfully do what you just said, but the kind specific helpful approach helps. They are taught and trained and know when I always remind them, the first thing you’re saying is what’s good about it every time. And I say it pretty much every time, what’s good about it? Because they do this, sometimes they want to jump right in. It’s like, “What’s good about it?” And sometimes what they say that’s good about it is very, very like, okay, let me say the good thing, get out of the way, because they want to get at the critique, but it helps. It stops from what you were about to say. It’s frustrating to do a lot of work and feel like none of the good parts were noticed at all, we’re noticing is the flaw.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about assessment along the way. I always think about assessment as making sure that kids are learning the stuff that you intend for them to learn and knowing what they need or what they need to do next. How are you doing that?

Jeff Govoni:
Well, I feel like I’m assessing the way I normally assess when I’m in a project, just meaning there’s a writing piece, I’m grading a writing piece, I’m assessing a writing piece, there’s reading, I’m grading, assessing, doing mini lessons, doing groups around it. It’s just that it’s attached to the project. But when it comes to the math, some of those standards, I do feel like I’m assessing, watching them measure things and watching them build things and their understanding of something like volume or the geometric parts that go along with building the doghouse.
And sometimes, not all the times, I do literally draw up a quiz or a test that fits like, okay, let me see if they understand this. Even if it’s with rulers. Rulers are incredibly complicated. Something to the 16th inch, that’s a great quiz for me to just throw at them after we practice it a little bit. Can they read what three-eights is? Can they read what nine-16th is? That kind of thing.

Alec Patton:
Yeah.

Jeff Govoni:
It’s an easy quiz, an easy assessment.

Alec Patton:
And I think something that the ninth-grade teacher Ted Cuevas said to me that really stuck with me is that by far the most important assessment is self-assessment because I’ll only be their teacher for a year, but they’re going to be with themselves forever. And if they can assess how they’re doing and whether they’re making sense out of something and what they’re learning and what they need to do, that’s the most important skill. And I think it’s an incredible assessment experience to have an incorrectly measured piece of wood cut for you. That’s a real quick, authentic assessment. You’re working with the adoption agency, were they involved throughout or was it after that initial trip, you were on your own doing your thing?

Jeff Govoni:
We worked with a few, and I know it felt like one, we were using kind of off and on throughout because they were the ones we did the calendars with. But really, it was more of they helped us out at the beginning, especially by letting us come do the visit. And that was a Humane Society, which interestingly, we’re going to do the project again this year and the Humane Society doesn’t do visits anymore, so we’ll have to figure something out. But anyway, it was kind of a beginning and end thing because then they brought the animals at the end for the adoption and they helped us out in the beginning, but along the way, we brought in a trained police dog into the gym. That was really fun. They just kind of showed off how this dog, all the things it can do and sniffing bombs and that kind of stuff.

Alec Patton:
Did you have anybody who was helping out with the construction side of things or was that just on you?

Jeff Govoni:
Oh yeah. So this is a great idea if you ever do a construction project. This one I’ve learned over the years. What we did was, when you know you’re getting into the heavy construction part where they’re really going to be building and there’s going to be saws everywhere and there’s going to be hammers and nails. We do a morning and an afternoon sign up for parents, is a block. It’s a two-hour block. And we basically had two full weeks of construction. We needed more like four, but I think we ended up doing three weeks.
Anyway, if you do a morning block for a couple hours, hour and a half or two hours, and you do an afternoon block for an hour and a half or two hours, it’s amazing how many parents will give up their time. And they love it too. They come down, they help their kid building their doghouse or their cat condo, and you give them that flexibility that can either come in the morning or in the afternoon. That’s huge. I suggest anyone do it that way. Yeah.

Alec Patton:
And then it comes time for exhibition, Liberty Station is going to be filled with dogs looking for a home and cats looking for a home. Tell us about that. That sounds crazy to me.

Jeff Govoni:
Well, there’s always parts that you kind of forget about. And the thing, I won’t say we totally forgot, but it got close before we realized, “Well, all the doghouse and cat condos are in the back.” They were back here in the back parking lot. We can’t put them on a red wagon and carry them 400 yards to the park across the street. So a couple days out, we had to start asking parents who’s got trucks. And of course, we got lucky. One parent had this massive, I don’t even what you’d call it, bigger than a truck. So it worked out. We had a couple dads that helped out and moms and we were able to get all the product, the quarter of a mile down the road. It was a funny moment where I’m like, “Oh yeah, we can’t just sort of carry those over.” By the way, a couple of the dog houses are maybe way too big. We won’t do that this year.

Alec Patton:
Did you just have to leave them there for a couple days and hope nobody messed with them? What was the-

Jeff Govoni:
Over there?

Alec Patton:
Yeah, over in the…

Jeff Govoni:
You mean for what got left for the exhibition?

Alec Patton:
Yeah, when you were setting up for the exhibition.

Jeff Govoni:
Well, we did it all at once.

Alec Patton:
You did it all at once, right?

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah. Again, helped. The parents were gung-ho. I think they see the excitement of their kid. I don’t know how it works. I don’t know if the kid in them gets excited, but their parents were all in. So [inaudible 00:23:49].

Alec Patton:
That’s awesome.

Jeff Govoni:
… bunch. Yeah.

Alec Patton:
Did you need to get special permits to have a bunch of dogs be like-

Jeff Govoni:
We did.

Alec Patton:
… an NTC?

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah.

Alec Patton:
She just made sure you-

Jeff Govoni:
That’s what colleagues are for, did a really good job with that to get those permits.

Alec Patton:
And so was it daytime, nighttime? Set the scene for me.

Jeff Govoni:
Morning, yeah. I think we started around 11:00.

Alec Patton:
[inaudible 00:24:13] weekday or weekend?

Jeff Govoni:
Saturday morning.

Alec Patton:
Saturday morning.

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah, Liberty Station. That was great. It was so many people. It was really fun.

Alec Patton:
So you just had random people coming in for Liberty Station like, “Oh hey, what’s going?”

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah. In addition to the parents, you’ve got so many people roaming around there. We figured that would be hit, and it was. There’s one more part of the project’s worth mentioning. We did team up with a guy named Shorty Rossi who used to have a pit bull sort of show on TV and he lives down in Mexico and he came up for it. He kind of became our keynote speaker. And the wild thing about it all, as I said, we really did make some dog houses that were too big. They’re just huge dog houses and he has a pit bull farm down there. And he said that whatever’s left over, and it seemed like the bigger ones are going to be left over because in San Diego, I think they were bigger than some people’s yards, so no one was going to take it, right? So he took them. He said he’ll drive his flatbeds up here in a few days and he took them all. So that felt really good. So they all went somewhere. So his pit bulls down in Mexico while they’re waiting to get adopted are in our dog houses.

Alec Patton:
That’s awesome. That’s really cool. This is thing I always ask the students afterwards, what was your golden moment of exhibition when you think back on it?

Jeff Govoni:
There were a few, they were all kind of tied together. The first to go was a cat and it was like a cat condo. And the cat condos came out beautiful. I mean, there’s so much talk about the dog houses, but I couldn’t believe how great some of the cat condos came out. So for me, I was really excited to see the two girls who made this cat condo. And of course, what’s beautiful is we’re taking photos of them with the family that adopted this cat and then chose their cat condo. So now you’re taking a photo of them. So that feels really good. The news came, so they were interviewing some of the kids. That was exciting. And seeing children climb all over the dog houses was kind of cool. All the people that brought their children and they were just children climbing in and out and all over the dog houses. I kind of like that too.

Alec Patton:
That’s awesome. All right, I’m going to turn it over to you all. If you have a question, come on up to the microphone. I’m going to make sure that we get it all set up here.

Speaker 4:
So I’m trying to get a lot of project-based learning and just community projects at the school I work at, but it is very much unlike High Tech High where it seems like the whole school is gung-ho about community involvement. So it’s really just every time I get a community partner is because I’m walking to these businesses and I’m talking to the people that own them or I’m just grassroots contacting them. How do you recommend is a very successful way for getting community partners and interactions with all that?

Jeff Govoni:
I haven’t done too much of what you did, but I love that, it sounds like you’re knocking on the door. That’s great. We have found a lot of success, speaking for other colleagues and myself. The answers seem to be through the parents. When you put it out to the parents, we’re interested in somebody who knows something about this or might be an expert in that, it’s amazing how often you get a response. Like, yeah, my brother’s, whoever is this, and that’s where I’ve gotten the most success over the years. It almost always feels like I find it through parents by putting in all email out. And my colleagues are doing it too. So you got three fifth grade teachers putting it out to whatever, you’ve got 150 parents. There’s a lot of connections that way. Had a lot of luck. That’s my first go-to.

Speaker 4:
No, I love it. Thank you.

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah, sure.

Alec Patton:
I think also, you’re doing really going. There’s this thing about just… It’s so much more work, but being face-to-face with somebody, your results are so much better. Yeah.

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah. So for example, we did project where they had to build a cardboard boat and float themselves and their buddy, and we put out about boat experts, and sure enough, one of the students fathers drives a tugboat right here in the harbor. So we did this whole launch where they spent some time on that beach over in Coronado and he drove his tugboat up to see us. It was a big surprise, just that kind of moment. The kids were losing their minds. So there you go. That’s my story. Sorry. Got a little excited for tugboats.

Alec Patton:
Talk to your site manager too.

Jeff Govoni:
Tugboats are cool.

Alec Patton:
Yeah, tugboats are super cool. But your site manager, they’ll know a lot of the parents going across the whole thing and they might be like, “Oh yeah-

Jeff Govoni:
[inaudible 00:28:47].

Alec Patton:
… so-and-so’s parent. they do whatever,” and they’re going to have that. Your colleagues will know as well, but nobody has that full picture.

Speaker 5:
Okay. How long of a process was this? You had said it was about three weeks of the heavy building, but are we talking all day every day for three weeks? And what about during the drafting phase?

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah, good question. I always think of, especially the construction projects, but all projects, it builds. So at first, you’re not allocating as much time towards the project. You’re kind of dipping in. And as the wheels start to spin and you get into… Ours went from late September to mid-January. We did our exhibition I think around mid-January. So whatever that was, three and a half months. But by the time you get to that last month, it feels like every subject is all project. Whatever we’re doing in math, it’s connected to project. Whatever we’re doing in writing is fully connected to project and whatever we’re doing. That’s why it’s so important to have the curriculum connected to the project. You can’t do both. You can’t teach a writing product, you just don’t have time. The writing product has to be connected to the project, in my opinion, and so does the reading and as much math as you can wring out of it.

Alec Patton:
And you want to try to avoid the project kind of competing with other stuff because if the project’s working and kids are stoked about it and you’re like, “Well, yeah, but today’s. Whatever, today’s… Guys, time to do our article of the week.” And the kids are like, “Yeah, I’ve got to…”

Jeff Govoni:
Get out your Greek roots notebook. We have to do it.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. So I think that-

Jeff Govoni:
[inaudible 00:30:35] possible.

Alec Patton:
… you want to avoid, especially when you’re in that crunch time.

Speaker 5:
Thank you. And Curious Minds want to know how many pets got adopted?

Jeff Govoni:
I don’t want to make up the count. Probably my two colleagues know better, but I want to say it was around 15. We had higher hopes, but we didn’t end up with very many dogs. We ended up with way more cat. One of them bailed last second. We were crushed. So we didn’t have a lot of dogs. We had more cats. There’s a lot of dog houses, but not a lot of dogs.

Speaker 6:
I’m just wondering how we can see photos or if we can see photos.

Jeff Govoni:
I have tons of photos, but Alec only wanted one.

Alec Patton:
Yeah, I needed one photo for the slide.

Jeff Govoni:
They’re pretty awesome.

Alec Patton:
We’ll share, we make photos. We’ll make photos available. We’ll make photos available in the show notes for the episode, but more quickly, we’ll make photos available for you all.

Jeff Govoni:
I’d love to show photos because I think it really shows their creativity and the uniqueness of each dog house in each cat condo. It was even better than I had anticipated.

Alec Patton:
If you can stick around a little bit, you can totally show photos.

Jeff Govoni:
I could check some up.

Alec Patton:
Yeah, that’d be awesome.

Speaker 6:
I’m also wondering just in what location you built the projects.

Jeff Govoni:
Right here in the back parking lot.

Speaker 6:
[inaudible 00:32:01].

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah. We basically sectioned off the last section probably with no permit at all and just said it’s ours and put some cones up and that was where we built.

Speaker 6:
Thanks.

Jeff Govoni:
Yeah.

Speaker 6:
Okay. Thank you.

Jeff Govoni:
Sure.

Alec Patton:
That’s a good thing about elementary school. You didn’t have a bunch of angry 12th graders trying to park.

Jeff Govoni:
Agreed. And it’s a good thing about High Tech is it’s just sort of becomes normal that these spaces get taken over as you get closer to exhibition and nobody seems to give you a hard time.

Alec Patton:
Yeah, absolutely.

Jeff Govoni:
All right.

Alec Patton:
Thank you so much. This has been an absolute pleasure. I love this project. We’ll talk again about Ninja Warrior. I’m just going to drop that for the future.

Jeff Govoni:
I’d love to. That deserves more credit than it got, I think.

Alec Patton:
Yeah. Well, as a big fan of the show, I’m eager to talk about that.

Jeff Govoni:
Right on.

Alec Patton:
All right, thank you so much. Thank you all to our audience here.

Jeff Govoni:
Thank you.

Alec Patton:
All right. Big round of applause for Jeff.

Jeff Govoni:
Thank you.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Herschel. Huge thanks to Jeff Govoni and the students of Deeper Learning by PBL for this episode. Jeff wrote an awesome article about doing construction projects with kids for the latest issue of Unboxed. You can find a link to it in the show notes. Thanks for listening.