Future City: Learning and Fun for All, and a Repeat Champion from Michigan
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housands of hours of hard work by more than 40,000 students from 1,350 schools nationwide—and it all boiled down to a seven-minute presentation from three kids from a small school in Rochester, Michigan. Yes, St. John Lutheran School did it again—winning the ESD Michigan Regional Future City Competition for the fifth straight year in January—and then going on to win the National Future City Championship, held as part of National Engineers Week, for the second straight year. 14 | TechCentury | Spring 2015
The St. John team also won three special national awards—best essay, best use of renewable energy, and best virtual city design. St. John’s city, called Lekol-la-fre, was the creation of Leah Schroeder, Emily Abramczyk and Abby Dayton and a team of other St. John’s students, guided by St. John teacher Jon Pfund and volunteer mentor Linda Gerhardt, Ph.D., global lead for paint quality at General Motors in Warren. “The most memorable part of our Future City experience was how we bonded with
each other,” said Dayton, 13. “There were stressful days but we stayed bonded and held each other up.” Teammate Schroeder, also 13, added: “We learned that if you do what you do to the best of your ability, you’re a winner inside.” Future City gives sixth, seventh and eighth graders the opportunity to engage in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics activities—and then apply those activities to real-world problems. Students create and build a city set 150 years in the future that’s organized around a central theme. The theme changes every