Why only Corsica Public?

We’ve had a couple people ask us why we’ve only been working with Corsica Public School students on the design:SD project. The answer is pretty simple: timing. When we began learning from and working with the Corsica community last fall, folks at the public school talked to us about a new program they were launching called “Senior Project.” CHS had applied for and received a state grant to implement a semester-long, hands-on learning experience for the senior English class. School officials had decided to go ahead with the program, but hadn’t selected a topic or format for the the students to work within.

At about he same time, we had just launched a Youth Engagement research project in which we set out to partner with a handful of South Dakota schools, and we had begun putting together the design: South Dakota project with the folks at AIA South Dakota. It was a perfect storm, of sorts. A partnership with CHS was born, and we’ve been working with Mrs. Eide and the Senior English class, engaging the students in hands-on learning about community design, ever since.

The things is, it all came together very quickly. The conversation started about the same time kids were already heading back to class. Had we had more time to put this together, we would have liked to have partnered with other area high schools (like Dakota Christain, Stickney, Armour, etc) and really made it a collaborative regional effort with kids from all those schools working together.

That’s kind of how pilot projects work. They are about learning how things work and how they don’t. We’re learning a lot about how to go about a youth engagement project like this in the future, and I’m sure things will be tweaked in the future. It’s been a great partnership with CHS, and hopefully a neat learning experience for the students (and their teacher too!) .

Joe