Top WOW! Moments of Spring 2013

Spring is a special time at Citizen Schools as we witness middle school students transform into impressive computer scientists, mechanical engineers, social entrepreneurs and more.  Hundreds of people have joined us this month to celebrate these WOW! moments—when students have the chance to show off their newly developed skills and passion for learning. From coast to coast, our students have been inspiring rooms full of professionals, family members and teachers, as they present their hard work from the past ten weeks. Here are some of our favorite WOW! moments from this spring... 1. New York Facebook WOW! Students in the Video Game Design apprenticeship taught by volunteers from Facebook learned the computer science behind their favorite video games. At the WOW! event they stumped professional engineers and programmers with their challenging and fun self-made video games.

2. Illinois Groupon WOW! Students in the Math Allstars apprenticeship transformed into entrepreneurs as they presented the amusement parks they designed to scale.

3. California Tech Challenge WOW! Students participated in the Tech Challenge competition where they were tasked with a mission to launch an egg onto an asteroid. The students then presented their design thinking process at the STEM WOW! event hosted by EMC.

4. North Carolina Lowe's Grove Middle School WOW! Students in the EMC Electrical Engineering apprenticeship taught guests about the environmental consequences of electronic waste and methods for electronic waste recycling.

5. Texas  NASA WOW! Students in the Mars Exploration apprenticeship at Patrick Henry Middle School in Houston saw a real Mars colony mock-up after presenting their Martian colonies to space architects and engineers at NASA.

6. New Mexico Van Buren Middle School WOW! Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, attended the WOW! at Van Buren Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico to support the students.

7. Massachusetts STEM WOW! Students from the TechnoSWAG apprenticeship led by Mark Greenlaw from Cognizant presented the LED light-up banners that they designed, programmed and built using a microcontroller. They truly impressed the crowd with their knowledge of circuits and programming.

8. New Jersey GlassRoots WOW!  Thanks to the nonprofit organization, GlassRoots, the students in this apprenticeship learned the art of glass-making. They created a beautiful mosaic reflecting their school community. There's still a chance to witness a WOW! moment like this in Newark, New Jersey at the upcoming Eagle Academy WOW! on June 15. Click here to register!

Help us create more of these WOW moments next year by signing up to teach an apprenticeship in the fall.