STUDENTprofile
Designing Real-World Projects Inspires this Student
Jerald Goins presents a great example of what happens when you give a kid a computer and
some free drawing software.
Jerald, who has no computer at
home and rarely had access to any
computing device before high school,
helped design a farmer’s market venue
in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, where he
lives. Under his direction, the team
took the project way beyond just doing a sketch of a building.
It was all part of an assignment to
create a farmer’s market to educate the
local community about food choices
for a biofit class at New Tech High,
a public school focused on project-based learning in Cleveland. Goins, a
sophomore, was the leader of a team
of students charged with designing a
building for the market. As he tells it,
no one in the group had any training
in architecture. They got started by
downloading Google Sketchup.
“Our design came to us just by play-
ing around with a couple of shape
tools,” Jerald recalls. “We came up
with an octagon shape with a dome
on top of it.”
They added solar panels on top of
the dome to make the building more
energy efficient. The panels were de-
signed to power automatic doors.
To make their project as realistic as
possible, the design team searched for a
real location using Google Maps.
“We found two huge open spaces,”
Jerald says. “They were not occupied
by any company or being used, so we
thought that a big, open green space
would do. We also decided to put in
a big, open courtyard where people
could sit and enjoy the produce that
they’ve just purchased. Beyond the
Jerald Goins
courtyard was a parking lot for shop-
pers and handicapped spaces for
people with disabilities. The other lot
across the street was for delivery trucks
coming to drop off fresh produce.”
The project was just a school as-
signment to open students’ eyes to
the potential for creating healthy
spaces in urban environments, but it
did more than educate a few students
about healthy, fresh food, said Jerald’s
teacher, Juliet King.
“A lot of kids changed the way they
ate,” King says. “Jerald was one of
those kids whose eyes were opened.”
King can’t say enough good things
about Jerald. “His maturity level is
beyond that of anyone else in our
school,” she says. “I constantly want to
say ‘mister’ before I address him. He
dresses like he’s going to work. He is
an excellent leader. If you make him
the leader of one of the groups, the
job will get done.”
King is impressed that Jerald man-
ages to be successful at a high-tech
high school despite having no internet
at home. But Jerald downplays the sig-
nificance of his low-tech household.
