School portraits / The Nerd Derby, sixth grade at Marymount, spring 2013
Marymount's Nerd Derby Was Won by Its Only Three-Wheeled Car
In 2013 a Manhattan girls' school brought a miniature car race into its cafeteria. The winner was its builders' fifth attempt. Later, the school added a prize for the slowest car.
In spring 2013, the Marymount School of New York, a girls' school on the Upper East Side, held its first Nerd Derby. The idea came from the Nerdy Derby, a miniature-car race designed by students at NYU and first run at the World Maker Faire in 2012. How do you get a Maker Faire installation into a school cafeteria? The school's technology coordinator, Jaymes Dec, told EdSurge it took "asking, hounding and begging" the designers.
The head of school, Concepcion Alvar, was on board: "Let's bring the Nerdy Derby to our school. We'll do it in the cafeteria!" She told the reporter that teachers start to lose students' engagement around sixth and seventh grade, and that projects like this bring them back.
Students spent a week building and revising their cars with partners. The maintenance crew brought risers into the cafeteria. A live bracket was projected on the wall. Fourth and fifth graders made flags for their favorites. Teachers wandered downstairs with cars of their own, wanting to race.
The crowd loved "District 12," named for The Hunger Games, and "Pink Package." A car called "Garbage Truck" raised eyebrows with its speed. The winner was X-Solo, the only three-wheeler in the competition. Its builders credited creative thinking and a certain weight added to one side. They also admitted it was their fifth car, and completely different from the first.
The fifth car. That is the whole lesson, and it took a week, and nobody had to say it out loud.
Dec later described the derby as an annual week-long collaboration among science, art and technology classes: half the week on experiments about what makes a car fast, the other half building. The prizes he lists: fastest car, slowest car, and Queen of the Hill.
The slowest car. A race with a prize for the slowest car is a race where everybody has a chance, and the middle one finally has a strategy.
The middle one's Cub Scout pinewood derby car, in second grade, was a block of wood with four wheels and a lot of paint. It finished last in every heat. He was devastated until the den leader gave him a ribbon for "Most Consistent." He has kept it. It hangs on his wall above two more recent trophies, which he says are less meaningful.
Last week he asked me what would happen if you entered a car that did not move at all. I said I didn't know. He said, then it would win slowest. He is working on it.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- EdSurge: A Miniature Car Building and Racing Competition Sparked Student Engagement at This School edsurge.com
- Jaymes Dec, project snapshots in Meaningful Making (2016), p.119 fablearn.org
- Marymount public parent and student reviews niche.com