Dixon Middle / Jr High School

Well the first thing we noticed as we pulled up to the school was that the sign out on the road read "Dixon Middle School" and the sign above the entrance read "Dixon Junior High School" - an interesting discrepancy. Age - this school was old and the sign above the entrance was obviously over 30 years old. Great, I thought, this place is as trashy as the Junior High I went to - gonna be a whole lot of technology here. . .

We entered Mr. Warble's Manufacturing class and were simply told that we could, watch, participate, or do whatever else we wanted to. The class was given 15 minutes of very basic instruction on how to make paper rockets and attach the fins and then they were turned loose. We circled around helping the kids who weren't listening to attach their fins the right way.

It was fun - honestly - it was. I was surprised at how quickly the time went, and how good some of the kids were at the assignment. I think it would be a fun class to teach - a very 'hands on' class. Oh yeah, and about the whole technology bit - the shop was only half of Mr. Warble's room - the other half was a computer lab with about 40 brand new mac's. Looks can be deceiving.