Forbes Road tech students build unorthodox snowmen for inaugural contest
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How many different ways can you build a snowman?
Students at Forbes Road Career and Technology Center have pushed the envelope on what defines a snowman in the school’s inaugural “Snowman Snow Down” competition.
Each program’s students had the opportunity to compete in the schoolwide contest for the most Facebook “likes” attached to the snowman’s photo.
For the inaugural event, the winning team, with exactly 600 votes, hails from the school’s electrical engineering program, whose students constructed their snowman using three green traffic lights.
The electrical engineering students get bragging rights and a donut party, said Megan Tomley, the school’s student services coordinator.
“It’s just a fun challenge to brighten up the lobby display case and bring some cheer – give the kids something positive to focus on,” she said.
The school draws from nine area school districts, including Gateway, Plum and Penn Hills. Being a hands-on learning environment, the school has students learning in-person five days a week. But each school district follows a different schedule and learning model.
Gateway, for example, follows a hybrid learning model – sending students to school in cohorts for two days and the rest of the week is done remotely. The high school, however, was closed because of a recent covid-19 outbreak there. The students enrolled at Forbes, therefore, were learning from home.
“Each classroom has a live Zoom meeting going on at the same time,” Tomley said.
The school has had to sacrifice field trips and events, she said. One of those involves hosting an event for which the catering students cook and prepare food. That was canceled because of the restrictions in place for the pandemic.
“So they’re not getting as much hands-on experience,” Tomley said.
She hopes the snowman contest has brightened days and tightened bonds between students and teachers who don’t see each other as often.
Each of the 18 participating programs placed their snowmen in display cases within the school’s lobby. There’s a robot-looking snowman made of diesel engine components, there’s one made of fire hoses, another made of just paper and some are made of computer monitors or wood.
“It was fun watching the kids brainstorm,” Tomley said, adding the electrical program students used three green lights from stop lights. “It’ll be cool to see what they come up with next year.”