AMAZING RACE, Metro Style

Once the summer travel was over, it was time to get back to the classroom. But the first week of school the focus is on getting to know each other, learning to work in teams and (can you believe it?) studying project management skills! The entire first week is spent in a class we call “Advisory.” Our teachers serve as advisors for a group of about 15 students. Advisors help students maintain their academic portfolio, serve as contact point for parents and overall advocate for the student’s intellectual, emotional and social well-being. Advisory meets once a week throughout the school year and that is when students plan and carry out their service learning projects.

On top of teaching their academic courses, this is a challenge for the advisors. The first order of business is turning this mixed group of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd year students into teams that will support one another and accomplish their goals for the year. A little competition is a good start. On the first day, advisors taught students project management principles they had learned from Battelle’s project management expert, Bill Altman. The students formed project teams and explored their individual strengths. Up next: The race.

On day two, each advisory set off on a scavenger hunt similar to the show, The Amazing Race, around OSU’s campus. Each class had a separate route, different clues and requirements to collect evidence of having solved the puzzles. One route that I had helped create took students to OSU President Gordon Gee’s office, the Olympic swimming pool in the main campus fitness center, the performing arts stage in the multicultural center and the rooftop greenhouse and the physics building.

The clues were not easy and the evidence was usually a photo of the team at the site or performing a task. The photos were turned into presentations that showed all of the evidence and explained how the teams worked together to solve the clues, traveled to the site and completed the task.

The point was to carry out a project and reflect on what worked, what didn’t work, how well they got along and who the leaders and followers were  –  all while learning about the many available resources on their new campus. The advisors were there to simply observe and help them remember their project management strategies – they didn’t have the answers to the clues! Disagreements and frustrations were part of the lesson, but in the end, most decided that it was a fun way to start school and a great team building exercise.

Mr. Trang’s Advisory after untangling a human knot at the recreation center..