WEEK OF NOVEMBER 14, 2024
VOLUME 122 | ISSUE 51
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Castle Rock educator repurposes yard signs GOP wins state for IT application and design student projects Legislature
races in Douglas County, with one exception
Corrugated plastic is useful in wide variety of creations and is otherwise hard to recycle BY MCKENNA HARFORD MHARFORD@ COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
After the end of an election or a school fundraiser, Castle Rock Middle School teacher Paula Wills has taken to collecting the plastic corrugated yard signs sporting campaign slogans or school mascots to give them a new life. Wills and her fellow educator Jacob McMonagle teach the elective IT application and design, where seventh- and eighth-graders get to build functional mechanisms, like mini catapults, wind turbines and bottle rockets. Wills repurposes the signs she collects into materials for her students’ projects. “(Students) like to use the corrugated plastic more than they like to use cardboard because it’s a little bit more durable and it can get wet without damaging their project,” Wills said. The class aims to teach students about the design process and introduce them to engineering, McMonagle said. Throughout the semester-long class, students work on four to five projects, where they design, build and
test their machines. Past projects have included magnetic levitation cars, DC motor cars, rockets and propellers. “We use the design thinking process to make our lessons so students first come up with a problem, they’ll do some research on the problem, then they’ll create some brainstorms about how to solve whichever project we’re working on,” McMonagle said. “Then they’ll actually get to build and test it.” Wills added that students learn about the process of trial and error, making adjustments to their builds along the way. “One of the keys that we try to really enforce is that nothing is going to be perfect the first time, and it’s really OK to fail,” Wills said. “You just go back and you redesign and rebuild, and you try to improve whatever it is that you’re doing.” Wills, who has been collecting plastic signs for reuse for around a decade, keeps a stockpile of them at the ready. She estimates around 300 students take the design class Castle Rock Middle School student Olly Clarke shows off his catapult made with corrugated each year. SEE PROJECTS, P4
BY HALEY LENA, MCKENNA HARFORD, ELLIS ARNOLD HLENA@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM, MHARFORD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM, EARNOLD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
plastic from recycled yard signs. Teacher Paula Wills collects signs for her students to turn into COURTESY PAULA WILLS design projects.
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Following months of appearing in ads, speaking with residents and debating at forums, preliminary results show many of the state lawmakers from Douglas County will likely still be Republican, with one exception: Bob Marshall. With several state House districts in Douglas County, each elected representative serves a two-year term, joining a total of 65 representatives at the Capitol. In the state Senate, members serve four-year terms in the 35-person chamber. While the preliminary results indicate the makeup of the House will continue to have a Democrat majority, the Douglas County results lean more Republican, following historical trends. It’s important to note that results have not been made official, as the Douglas County elections office continued to update results in the days following Nov. 5. According to the Douglas County elections office, there were about 322,000 total registered voters this election season, with about 296,000 active. Of those active voters, nearly half were registered as unaffiliated, while about 32% were Republicans and about 17% were Democrats. SEE RACES, P9
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