This year Banks High School horticulture teacher Tim Eggleston wanted to give his students a special hands-on project to put their skills and knowledge to use. A couple months later his class was putting the finishing touches on three fully functional putting greens.To get started, everyone in the class submitted a putting green design. The class voted to choose the top 3. The students with the winning designs became the project bosses, guiding small groups of their classmates through the process of bringing their designs to life using wood, astroturf, and trigonometry. Mr. Eggleston wanted the process to mimic a real life construction project as closely as possible--from submitting designs to delegating tasks and negotiating leadership roles.
"It's fun to actually do the hands-on work," says student Garritt Schmidlkofer. "You're not sitting in a chair for an hour and a half and then switching classes and sitting in another chair for an hour and a half. You get to see the results of your work."
"If you're lazy, you're not going to like this class," says 8th grader Alina Boding. "I love using the tools."
Adds Bryton McKinnon: "It's cool to actually be able to build stuff. And also mini golf is my third favorite sport."
Check out Banks High School's budding golf course designers hard at work:
