When it comes to paper-folding, my two favorite things are sharing what I make and teaching other people. So, when the director for The University of Akron’s Women in Engineering program asked if I would be the ‘keynote’ speaker for the Kids’s Career Day and teach some origami, I was on-board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I found out that it was on a Saturday at 7:45 am. Hmmmm\u2026okay, doable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then I found out it was 200 girls, age 1st-6th grade. And I had 45 minutes. And they would be coming in randomly after breakfast. And it was going be in the student union theater with no desks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve taught lots of people – one at a time. And I’ve taught a group once of about 15 kids at one time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But this. This was a whole new level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was given plenty of time to plan this and it all culminated this morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The theater seating doesn’t have fold-out desks, so I had cardboard boxes cut down to make temporary folding desks. 200 worth. I also had several reams of paper – collated into sets for the projects. I had signs made up and giveaways of origami in bulk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest challenge was how to teach 200 kids at once. With one or two people, it’s easy to help if something goes wrong. But in a theater full of people, there’s no way to correct if things go awry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, I had talked to one of my colleagues about rigging up a video camera to project my hands and the paper onto the big screen. He came through and we were larger than life 15 minutes before the first kid came in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coordinator for the event introduced me and then I was on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We started with the butterfly, then did a boat, and then a duck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a different experience than when I’d taught before. I had to go slower, repeat the steps, and keep everyone engaged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, it worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The video camera worked perfectly. The kids stayed on track. And everyone, including me, had fun. I got compliments and thanks from the parents that were there and I think the kids were impressed with the tiny cranes and boxes I gave away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it was done, I packed up my gear and headed home – exhausted, but happy with the results and my new personal record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it comes to paper-folding, my two favorite things are sharing what I make and teaching other people. So, when the director for The University of Akron’s Women in Engineering program asked if I would be the ‘keynote’ speaker for the Kids’s Career Day and teach some origami, I was on-board. Then I found out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2547,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2546\/revisions\/2547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}