In the midst of Philomath High School’s annual field day Friday morning at Clemens Field, one of the more stunning visuals involved a very long stretch of familiar-looking bright orange Hot Wheels track with three dozen loops making its way out of an open press box window, down over the stands and track and ending on the football field.
Students were attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the most loop-the-loops completed by a Hot Wheels car on a single supported track.
Chris Singer, Mid-Valley STEM-CTE Hub’s program coordinator, had seen online that a Grants Pass father-son team had broken the record with a Hot Wheels car making it through 20 loop-the-loops.
“I said, ‘we can do that … why not?’ And I gave them the idea,” Singer said. “The kids have been all in.”
In September of last year, a trio in Susanville, California broke the record with a run of 28. Philomath designed a track with 36 loops.
“We’ve been running tests all day and we’re using different cars, different weights,” said April McKinney, PHS special programs teacher.
In the end, the group’s longest run was getting through eight loops.
“Frankly, I’m surprised we got as far as we did,” said PHS junior Seth Jordan, who spent time working on the track. “I was thinking we would build it and it would fall apart as we were hoisting it up — and it almost did.”
So, was keeping the track intact the real victory?
“It’s a victory that it even happened in the first place,” Jordan said. “I don’t know when we’re going to do this next but we should probably start it at the beginning of the school year and work on it as much as we can.”
Jordan is among those in the high school’s STEM class that contributed to the project.
In the end, all involved seemed to be having a good time. And for many of the students, there were lessons learned, which is really what the activity was all about — serving as a culmination of a yearlong pilot project that Singer launched in an effort to offer more outreach to underserved communities.
“Philomath is a rural community so that applies but I also wanted to work with special ed students and Life Skills kids because they are really underserved,” Singer said.
The program, a partnership between PHS and the Mid-Valley STEM-CTE Hub, is called STEAM For the Win. STEAM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.
McKinney sees great value in the program.
“We have kids that have a hard time engaging in high school because they have disabilities,” McKinney said. “By the time they get to high school, there’s been so many years of struggle that they’re just biding their time until graduation.”
Working with Singer’s program every other Friday has made a difference — even to the point of seeing better attendance from among the kids on those days.
“They know we’re going to be working with our hands and we’re going to be problem solving and we don’t have to have the answers first,” McKinney said. “Overall, what it’s doing is encouraging students to explore their gifts and talents — students who would otherwise constantly feel like ‘I don’t measure up.’”
From the beginning of the academic year, Singer has been meeting twice a month with Philomath educators and students — and he also works with Kings Valley Charter School students.
The Mid-Valley STEM-CTE Hub, which serves Linn and Benton County communities, strives to create and elevate STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and CTE (career technical education) opportunities throughout the region..
“What we’ve done is progressively build up to this kind of project,” Singer said. “We started out doing Lego marble mazes. Then we made marble mazes with plywood and nails and rubber bands. Then we did domino chain reactions and started working as a team together.”
The first real challenge, he said, was what he called a “Barbie bungee drop” that was staged right before the holiday break. Operating from upstairs in the high school, the task was to see how many rubber bands were needed to make Barbie bungee down toward the floor without smashing her head.
“In all these activities, we teach them employability skills,” Singer said. “I have data sheets for every project we do and what kinds of skills can be learned and they’ve been useful enough that they’re actually using them in IEP (individualized education plan) meetings with kids.”
After the holiday break, Singer said every student with an IEP assembled and learned how to fly drones — an activity that instilled confidence.
“A lot of special ed students don’t have the most positive experiences in school so things don’t come very easy,” Singer said. “We’re showing them that they are very capable of learning and doing things that they might not have considered.”
For the Hot Wheels record attempt, the kids ventured into engineering and the use of math skills.
“Today is a celebration of what we’ve done all year and just what we’re trying to do,” Singer said. “We’re building a community here … we’re involving all of the kids together.”
McKinney was sitting at the end of the track recording video of the attempts to break the record.
“I’m looking at all of the different people involved and the students who are coming up — general education students and special education students are all wanting to be involved,” she said. “Projects like this take away the stigma … we’re doing cooler projects on a regular basis and the other students are asking to be a part of it.”
With student groups interacting through such activities, McKinney has seen a boost in confidence.
“I’m really excited about that part of it whether we beat the Guiness World Record or not,” she said. “Another thing that’s been really cool is we’ve been able to collaborate with the Life Skills class and take students who would normally feel more limited in our resource room and incorporate them into this project because there’s something for everybody to do.”
Saff Evans said her Life Skills students have embraced the project.
“I don’t think half of them understand what all of this entails and where it goes,” Evans said. “You hear about world records but to actually participate in one? C’mon, that’s half the battle, that’s half of the fun.”