Kekionga Middle School teachers Kate Curless and Courtney Painter are already planning for next year’s Future City Regional Competition.
Saturday, at the 2020 regional competition, the team placed in the top five, taking fourth place, the same prize the team won in 2018, the first year they entered the competition. This year’s theme was clean water.
Norwell Middle School in Ossian took first Saturday, presenting a futuristic model city, Yemoja, with buildings crafted from ground bottlecaps that looked like they were cut from a block of handmade soap.
Kekionga stayed in real-time. The city the 10 team members chose, Karbala, is located in southwest Iraq and is the hometown of Kekionga eighth grader Hussein Al-Shaibani, 14.
Al-Shaibani was as well-versed in the cruel politics of war and water as he was in the engineering know-how to keep people and other living creatures with enough water in the desert.
The mighty Euphrates River flows not far from Karbala, Al-Shaibani said, but with other countries vying for that natural resource and the ugly reality of sanctions, upstream dams that control water flow are manipulated for punishment. Other countries include Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran, he added.
"Whenever they want to impose sanctions, they can cut off our water," Al-Shaibani said.
The rest of the team took on the challenge and immersed themselves in Iraqi culture. At one point, Painter said all the women and girls were wearing the hijab, "but it was very hot."
To resolve the water issue, the team came up with a plan to constantly recycle the water, sometimes referred to as “gray water,” without losing nearly a drop. Meanwhile, underground pumps could be built to move water from the Euphrates into the city.
Students envisioned buildings and the monorail powered by the sun and wind. On the model, tiny solar panels moved like butterfly wings on at least two buildings while an underground monorail system could be seen below the model table.
Twinkling lights served as stars on a backdrop to the city with bejeweled mosques and architectural forms evocative of the Middle East. Many of the buildings were created from discarded computer chips carefully hoarded at the middle school, Painter said.
The schools are kept to a budget of $100 for the project, said Carol Dostal, outreach director for PFW’s College of Engineering, Technology and Computer Science, one of the competition’s primary sponsors that include Fort Wayne Community Schools and the city of Fort Wayne.
Those kinds of rules make for a more even playing field, Dostal said.
Curless and Painter appreciated cost rules. Out of a student body of 554 students, nearly 70% of the student body at Kekionga qualifies for free student lunches and another 6% for reduced price lunches this school year, according to Indiana Department of Education online data.
Curless and Painter, who teach math and science, spend four hours two Saturdays of each month working with the students on the project, they said. The project itself cost about $40, but the teachers provide snacks for their students at each gathering and that costs about $35 each time.
"I would love some help," Painter said. Both teachers waited as the awards were called out, assuring their students and parents who attended not to panic.
Out of a long list of special awards, Kekionga walked away with "outstanding artistic vision," and "outstanding moving parts," but it took a while before the school’s name was called to come up to the podium.
They were all surprised when they were called up for fourth place.
For Rory Gadbois, an eighth grade team member who made the formal presentation to the judges along with Al-Shaibani and Jonathan Nino, the location of their project was something she wouldn’t forget.
"I really like where it is,"Gadbois said, "how special the place is."
Besides the three presenters, team members included Jude Ratajczak, Avery Gordan, Gabriela Carillo, Isaac Cortes, Makaylee Born, Kehadi McCain and Evinn Diclementi-Ross.
The top five schools were Norwell, first; Blackhawk, second; Jefferson Middle School, third; Kekionga, fourth; and Lane, fifth.
Other middle schools competing included Summit. Northwood, Memorial Park, and Woodside. DeKalb Middle School was not able to attend.
jduffy@jg.net
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January 19, 2020 at 08:33AM
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Middle school students share visions in Future City competition | Local | Journal Gazette - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette
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