Our Mentors

I chose to interview Mr. Perry because of the relationship I was able to build with him last year during Metals 1. During his class I also learned that he has a lot of different skills, ones that could be useful during our courtyard renovation. One of the common practices in school that reduce movement for students is the use of seating charts. Therefore, in the interview I asked him about his opinion about this. He stated, “No one likes seating charts, I don't like them and the kids don't like them. So why have a seating chart if no one likes it?” Instead, Mr. Perry encourages his students to gather in the classroom at the beginning of the hour when he runs through his plan for the day and then they move to various places in the shop to work on their projects. His students spend most of their time moving. Although his students are able to get more movement due to his subject, it is harder for other teachers to incorporate movements. This is why we would like to start utilizing the Courtyard. Although this space isn’t practical for a shop class, it could be a place where other classes can go work.

Mr. Perry’s advice regarding our project goals with the courtyard were to add color and make it draw attention to itself. This is because not a lot of people don’t even know about where it’s at or that this resource is available. Making it more accessible is also important, making more of the doors available for entering and exiting the courtyard.We also discussed whether or not wood tables would be a good option for the courtyard, and he thought they would last a long time.

Overall, the interview may have been short, however I feel like I gained a lot of knowledge. Mr. Perry will be a great resource for brainstorming other ideas in the future. He also offered his classes to help with building furniture and coming up with plans as we move forward. I would like to thank Mr. Perry for taking the time to answer my questions and support our project.

I chose to interview our school principal, Mr. Spiegel because he has a good outlook on the school as a whole and would be able to guide me to many other resources if I needed them. I started to build a relationship with Mr. Spiegel after my three years at the high school when he started coming to our lunch table to talk. During the interview, I asked him about his thoughts on the courtyard and how to make it known. He said he would like to see it more lively and put new plants and make it more colorful. He advised talking to a landscaper to help us with the garden and asking Mr. Perry, our shop teacher, if his class could help us make benches or sculptures. He told me that our middle school principal’s husband would be a good resource because he owns a landscaping company, and he may be able to help us with the garden, or if we have questions, we could go to him. I also asked why it hasn’t been managed in the past few years and he said that the Special Ed Department doesn’t take care of it anymore because they started a coffee shop in our school. Nobody else wants to take care of it because it is expensive to fix and is very time consuming. Many people don’t use our courtyard because it doesn’t look the best and many classes are big so there isn’t enough seating out there to seat big classes. We asked Mr. Spiegel if we had any limitations and he said that we had no limitations. Our goal is to make people want to use the courtyard more whether its for learning, doing homework or studying. We want to make it a space where people can go and use it when they don’t want to sit in the classroom. Overall, the interview was beneficial to get us started with our project. This interview taught me a lot because I learned what we could use and what he would want to see in the courtyard. I would like to thank Mr. Spiegel for taking the time to do this interview and giving me many tips and resources to do our project.