Hello! My name is Sarah (they/them) and I am 17 years old. I am a senior at the Academy, as well as an international student from Belgium. I have been studying here for two years now, and I feel this project is the best way for me to leave a mark and say goodbye to this community. It was also a great opportunity to show leadership and I appreciate Mr. Miller for letting us take initiative. We started working on this project in March of 2021, and it took us about 3 months to accomplish it. Our environmental science class worked along with the school's geometry class, which consists of a mix of different grades, and that was a lot of fun!
Hi, I'm Nick Clark, I'm 19, and I'm a senior at the Academy. I've been here since 9th grade. I really enjoyed working on this project, and I think it's really cool that we got an opportunity to build an outdoor space that's gonna be able to be used long after we graduate.
SARAH Monday - Today, we went into the woods to cut down some saplings. Mr. Miller told us about different types of trees we could use, and which one would be the best (it happened to be Black Birch). I discovered that the wood needed to be very straight, about 1 inch and a half wide, and that it would be ideal to have 4 feet long “sticks”. (we later found out about the three different lengths we needed, mentioned in the podcast)
So we got into the forest, and found a lot of black birch. My first impressions were very nice. I was always very excited about this project but now that we started doing it, I cannot wait for more wood work. I also found out that cutting the trees, and especially taking the bark off of them, was extremely therapeutic for me. It helped channel a lot of energy and anger I had (related to other random things) and after the two hours spent in the forest, I felt much more relaxed, calm, rested even. It was overall a lot of quality time, and another thing to point out, even if it isn’t really related to the project itself, is that it was very nice being such a small group, talking about what we were doing and other things, just spending time together. I think it brought the seniors that were there closer together.
Thursday - We had less time in the woods today. But I got to teach Zoe Neeley (an academy alumn) how to peel the wood, and it felt really nice transmitting what I had learned on Monday.
The first week definitely raised up to my expectations, I am really excited to start next week off with more wood cutting and shaving.
NICK I think the main expectation I have for the project of building the geodesic dome is that it's gonna be a lot of manual labor, and hard work, but it's going to be really fun to build and hopefully something that's around for a long time after we’re graduated. The first week working on it really did solidify that it's going to be a lot of hard work, going from working in almost 70-degree weather on Monday morning to snow, 30’s and 40mph winds on Thursday definitely made it a challenge. We seem to have a good system of who does what in terms of chopping down trees, the peeling of the bark, and chopping off branches though, and I think that will come in handy for how quickly we can get the supplies we need from the woods.
SARAH Monday - We carried wood around after cutting it down and taking off all the branches. It was very hard work, but I got good pictures. My expectations are getting higher because I feel that we are all getting into the project more and more, and it is exciting to know we will get to include geometry class soon too.
I would say my greatest fear at the moment is that it is going to be very tiring to do all the wood stripping, and then putting the dome together.
The biggest challenge is yet to come, because this is just like getting information before writing an essay. The essay is putting the dome together, everybody coordinating etc. Yes, I just compared this manual fun project to writing an essay, I embrace it.
Thursday - I had a group of three 10th graders build a small version of the dome today, and it was so much fun. They listened to me, and we got most of the dome done. It was nice having so much leadership, and I was actually really scared of having to take care of somebody else’s work and stuff. But my expectations are higher now, I have a little more faith that they will put in the work as much as we are trying to.
NICK My expectations for the dome project after week 2 are mostly that we’ll hopefully finish collecting the wood we need sometime soon, and find out where we’re gonna put the dome. I think at the moment, my biggest fear is that I’m gonna accidentally either drop a tree on someone or somehow hurt myself in a stupid way. I think the biggest challenge we’ll need to overcome at the moment, is finding out where we’re going to put the dome.
SARAH I feel like when it only is envi-sci, we are very relaxed and I tend to let myself wander in my thoughts, but when we are with geometry class, I feel like I have to take leadership to help them get through the project and it feels very nice, because we have an exact goal. To me, it relates to sustainability because we are transmitting the knowledge Mr, Miller transmitted to us in the first place.
I think that working with geometry class taught us a lot about how community related a project like this dome can be. We had to work all together, distribute tasks so that everyone was participating, and doing all that without asking too much of everybody. Don't get me wrong though. it was a lot of fun.
NICK Working with Geometry on the dome project strangely gives me a sense of community that I haven’t felt since school stopped and went remote last year. It’s been hard without the cross-grade interactions this last year and I feel like working with geometry has helped bring that back to me. I think it also helped give me more of a “senior” feel, having the responsibility of supervising them working on the project, just one of those small leadership opportunities that we didn’t really get during zoom school. When we’ve been working on the project as just envisci, it’s felt like a normal class to me, I’m really glad we actually are doing this project. I don’t know how it relates to sustainability to me, I think it would be that we’re passing down the knowledge we have obtained about the trees/branches, and why we’re using the wood that we are, and how to cut the wood into smaller logs efficiently without a lot of waste.
SARAH I think it was a great experience, and a great way of bringing the geometry and envi sci classes together. We also now have this beautiful structure, right on campus, and it is always nice to see it when I walk around, and be able to know that I was one of the people who put it together.
I have learned how to strip wood, which is very fun. I've also learned that it takes a long time to gather enough wood to make a geodesic dome, and it takes a lot of cooperation.
Some difficulties that could have been avoided, probably missing one long at the end, that was very irritating. I feel like we could have kept track of the pieces more closely, and maybe it wouldn’t have happened.
I feel like I was able to work with other people, sometimes help the younger students if they needed direction in what they were doing. I'm also happy to have been with so many different grades in this project. My assessment of the project itself is that we did very well, and I can’t wait to see what it will look like when it is fully finished and secured.
NICK I’ve learned a lot about cutting down trees, and how to use a hand saw properly. My estimation issues have made it hard for me to know which trees to cut down, and hard to remember what the measurement lengths are for the sticks. I can’t think of any downsides off the top of my head that could have been avoided, but the most challenging day for me in this, was when we collected trees from the other side of the upper field by the baseball diamond where the power company had taken down saplings, hauling all our trees back to the bridge was extremely hard that day partially due to the wind, and also the fact we were hauling trees uphill. I think so far the project has been a success, we have a dome that looks like a dome and is at the dimensions we wanted it to be. I think the most challenging part from here, will be making sure all the logs stay together/locking them in place, at a distance certain parts of the dome looks like it is leaning heavily to one side. I think my role in the project has been mostly helping cut trees down, shaving logs, and putting holes in the logs for the screws, as well as helping geometry if they have any questions about any trees or dimensions measuring logs. I’m comfortable with what my role in this process has been, and I look forward to our full completion of the dome and the project itself.
SARAH 1. In what ways has/will our project achieve(d) any of the UN sustainable development goals we researched at its outset? Review the goals and explain your thinking.
I think we followed and accomplished the goals that are about climate conservation, clean energy since we used almost no power tools. I think we can follow the goals about identity, peace and education if everybody respects the dome and makes it a homey place for EVERYONE. If a certain group of people decides to claim it, I’m not sure what we could do, but it would go against the academy feel we usually have here.
2. What do you foresee as the lasting impacts of this project, both on the AAC community as a whole and on yourself as an individual community member? What is your vision for how this project will continue to evolve over the next 10 years?
I think everybody in the community is very excited about the dome and about what it will look like when it is finished. I have answered people’s questions a lot since we put up the dome. I hope everybody will respect it as much as we do, and I hope to be able to see it and hang out in it when I come to visit in the near/not so near future after graduating.
I hope that in 10 years, plants will have grown all over it, and that academy students will cherish it, use it for good reasons, and gather around it (hopefully there isn’t a raging pandemic happening then and they can have some classes in there too!)
NICK I’m not sure our project will achieve many UN sustainability goals, aside from maybe their goal of life on land. However, we did use almost all the wood we cut and were very careful not to waste anything. We’ll also meet goal 15 if we decide to plant anything around the dome or use a material to cover the dome that could then re-grow something around it.
I think the lasting impact for the AAC community is that it will hopefully be a great spot on campus to sit outside in the spring and fall and have lunch or outdoor classes, or just to spend a quiet free out under the dome away from everything else. A lasting impact for me as a community member is that I got to be a part of the group that helped build the dome and that the dome will help our class leave a lasting presence on campus in an unusual but cool way. Over the next 10 years, the dome will probably need routine maintenance done on it, making sure that all the joints are still connected, and that whatever the cover ends up being doesn’t rip anywhere, and that the dome doesn’t fall off the supports. The mulch will probably have to be replaced every spring too.