I picked up Makerspace as my second class. By design, I co-taught this class with my mentor teacher Mr. Chandonnet and Mr. Paradise. Makerspace takes a holistic approach to engineering and education. Makerspace served as a safe space that promoted personal growth in healthy ways. We strove to make a welcoming, encouraging, collaborative and safe environment to promote each other's abilities, personalities, and ideas. Projects were a way for students to express themselves while also developing professional skills for their future. We practiced healthy ways to manage, organize and tackle work, tasks, and thoughts with the bullet journal. We put emphasis on mental health and kept the class aware of how interconnected it is with work and innovative thinking, despite what other classes and people lead them to believe. The process of producing and brainstorming ideas has been neglected in other areas of students' lives as well leaving many with difficulty creating original ideas and stress-inducing expectations for doing so. We introduced and practiced different ways to brainstorm with what we called "Hive Mind" brainstorming. Students were given 1-2 minutes and listed any word thought or idea that came to mind no matter how insignificant or irrelevant. The concept is to remove as many limiting thoughts as possible by restricting time and promoting quantity over quality. We then combined all ideas into a class or small group list and then discussed our interests in each. Ideas one had little faith in others would express interest in and the class would collaborate. We let the students Hive Mind ideas for existing projects and even topics for their next project. For any project though, students were given as much time as they needed to find an idea they cared about. The students chose the direction of the class and Mr. Chandonnet, Mr. Paradise, and I organized and guided the class to ensure personal growth. We would mediate discussions, project expectations, and deadlines but would never restrict or pressure students to deliver work to specified standards. The product, the deliverable, of Makerspace was personal growth and the projects only served as mechanisms for doing so. Because Makerspace turned into such a safe space, activities like the Hive Mind proved extremely beneficial and effective but not all classrooms could adopt this effectively without putting work into the class environment first. The collaborative environment of Makerspace forever benefited me just as much as the students. Invaluable communication skills were developed. Students are better able to communicate their ideas to others, constructively discuss feedback, and express their interests and needs outside of engineering-specific matters. Below are pictures of different student projects created throughout my semester.

One of the most essential aspects of an effective classroom is the feeling of safety. Makerspace, like Engineering Principles, is a place where students can express themself. To achieve this, I always: assure all voices are heard equally, appeal to multiple learning styles, and offer necessary modifications and accommodations needed for students to learn at the same standard as the rest of the class. Below are the results of 3 questions from my student feedback survey pertaining to a safe learning environment. These results are class-specific, unlike the overall results shown in the Safe Learning Environment section. My Makerspace class showed outstanding success with all students to varying degrees affirming the safe environment in the class.