School Days:
Gilroy Unified School District
El Roble Technology Challenge
By Melanie Corona, Public Information Officer, Gilroy Unified School District
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GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN
Austin Sorenson (fourth grade) and Maya Sanchez (fifth grade)
preparation her team discovered a problem with part of their
device and had to go back and “iterate” their process. When
I asked her to elaborate, she replied, “There was a part that
wasn’t working and we had to go back through our steps to
make the device stronger.”
The students I interviewed are Fifth Graders now in
their second year of the Tech Challenge Club, and they all
are excited to return to the Tech Museum of Innovation
in March to test their knowledge and skills against their
peers. They are excited to see other ideas brought to the
Challenge by their peers from other schools, and to learn
about what secondary school students were doing for their
projects. They talked about learning from other students,
and expanding on ideas and mistakes that were brought to
the Challenge by other teams.
Mrs. Krejdovsky shared with me that the Tech Challenge
Club at El Roble is open to students from all backgrounds
and academic abilities. She said one student who is in
Special Education is the Club’s best structural builder.
“He always has a way of looking at things that opens my
eyes,” she said, “and we know that whatever he constructs is
going to be structurally sound and will stand up. Kids want
to work with him because he brings such a unique talent to
their team.”
The El Roble staff and administration is committed to
the longevity and success of the Tech Challenge Club, and
Principal Scott Otteson has recently reconfigured the space
formerly used as the staff lounge and copy room into an
all-access STEM Lab for students (the staff lounge and copy
room were relocated). While in its infancy, when the Lab is
complete, it will be a place for students to connect, collabo-
rate and create, through science, technology, engineering and
math. However, the greater lessons being discovered in El
Roble’s Tech Challenge Club transcend traditional education
by helping students prepare to become citizens of the world.
december 2018-january 2019
gmhtoday.com
Every Tuesday, after school at El Roble Elementary,
35 students gather in Mrs. Krejdovsky’s classroom
for the Tech Challenge Club. This club was
established in partnership with The Tech Museum
of Innovation. It’s goal: to provide STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math) learning opportunities
in and outside of school, especially for students traditionally
underrepresented in these fields of education.
The club provides year-round learning opportunities,
culminating with the annual Tech Challenge. To run
a club of this kind, teachers are required to complete
a training program, after which they are designated as
Tech Academy Fellows.
Students work collaboratively in small groups on various
projects, guided by teachers: Mrs. Krejdovsky, Mrs. Pearson
and Mr. Casey to help them reach the objective for the day.
Projects are designed to help students construct devices to
be presented at the Tech Challenge in March. Rather than
following the traditional teacher-student format, there’s an
exchange of information between students and teachers,
most often with students leading the exchange.
When I visited El Roble, students were actively engaged
in building conductors that lit up when connected to an
energy source. They worked together to discover the best
methods for completing the project, and cheers went up
from students and teachers alike when the lights turned
on. It was a moment of excitement and pride.
What struck me most when I spoke with some of the
students were the “life lessons” they shared with me. They
said the Tech Challenge Club has taught them the value of
teamwork in order to tackle their project from a variety of
approaches and reach the best solution. One of their favorite
sayings is “fail faster to succeed sooner.” They learn it’s
okay to make mistakes, because it’s an opportunity to learn.
One student shared that during last year’s Tech Challenge