Bricolage Academy of New Orleans was buzzing — with drones and animatronic puppets, robots and race cars.
This was not an ordinary day of school at the New Orleans public charter elementary school. It was the Mini Maker Faire, which Bricolage hosted for the entire city of New Orleans, including about 50 grown up makers and about 40 teams of young makers who came to show off their creations. This was the third year the school hosted the event; there are other maker faires in big U.S. cities, but this is the only one between Georgia and Texas.
“Bricolage had a great chance to present the Maker Faire to the community, invite everyone who was already a creative and already making stuff to come to one place at one time at one day to show off what they’re doing and to inspire others — everyone who attends — to make,” the school’s founder and leader, Josh Densen, said. “That connects directly to the Bricolage mission of creating innovators.”
Bricolage Academy is on a quest to advance educational equity by preparing students of diverse backgrounds to be innovators who change the world. The elementary school students at the school take math and English language arts. They also all have a regular class on innovation. The school’s innovation teacher, Alex Owens, said his classroom is “a mini maker space” where the students experiment with everything from building robots to coding to creating stop motion movies with LEGOs.Bricolage students said innovation class taught them lessons — about creativity and also about how to work hard, experiment, and keep trying, even when things get tough.
“In innovation you can create anything, like anything,” said Henry, a first grader.
A second grader, Selena, said she’d been developing a robot in her innovation class.
Kingston, a second grader, said he’d built a talking security camera.
“Our kids are really smart,” Alex said. “They can figure it out. They’re coming into this generation where they don’t need sages on the stage to tell them everything. They just need to be pointed in the right direction and given an environment where they can find the right resources to make their ideas happen.”
