Building for the future Sacred Heart students compete in national Future Cities competition

Sacred Heart School Future Cities team: left to right, Carol Gado, Rory Berry, Koji Thompson, Jonathon Eldredge, June Shang, Nora Glancey, Alex Rulon, Gian Sim and Dan Gado (Courtesy Photo/Sacred Heart Catholic School)

By Naomi Kerns,

Vice Principal,

Sacred Heart School, Boise

for the ICR

On any given evening, you’re likely to see Mrs. Gado’s car in the parking lot of Sacred Heart School in Boise long after students have gone home.

Carol Gado has been teaching Science and Math for the last 11 years and has devoted herself to inspiring students through extracurricular Science and Math experiences. One of those is the Regional Future Cities Competition at Boise State University. For 16 years, Gado’s knowledge of the Future City competition has led to many successes.

This year, the Future City team from Sacred Heart Catholic School’s seventh and eighth grades achieved a first-place finish in the 21st Regional Future Cities Competition at Boise State University. The team not only won first place overall (out of 35 teams from 17 schools) but also earned awards for Best Presentation, Best Model, and Best Essay.

Sacred Heart has earned numerous prizes and even first-place finishes over the years, but has never won in all three categories.

Students completed this project by participating in an after-school club, meeting several times a week, including over their Christmas break.

According to the Future City website, “Future City starts with a question – how can we make the world a better place?”

To answer that question, middle school students imagine, research, design and build cities of the future that showcase their solution to a citywide sustainability issue. Students apply science and math skills to inform their decisions about their city design.

In addition to researching technology, students must also communicate their city design through a 1,500-word essay, a 7-minute presentation, and an 8-minute question period with a panel of judges. They also build a 2-foot by 4-foot model of their city while keeping to a $100 budget.

Students work for approximately five months researching the theme and all aspects of what makes a city operate. The research includes everything from what residential housing might look like in 100 years to how waste management will be accomplished in a floating city designed to address sea-level rise caused by climate change.

The first-place finish at the Regional Future Cities Competition at Boise State University advanced the Sacred Heart team to the national competition in Washington, D.C.

The team, assisted by various parent chaperones, traveled to Washington, D.C., Feb 15-18. In D.C., the team took home 17th place out of 46 competitors and received great feedback from judges about their performance.

June Shang, one of the seventh- grade participants, shared that “Being able to compete at regional and national levels was an experience I won’t forget, with the clean sweep at regionals and the trip to D.C.” Some of her trip highlights included visiting the nation’s capital, seeing monuments that were so easily accessible, and making great memories with her friends.

Nora Glancey, another seventh-grade Sacred Heart student, shared that her highlights were “spending so much time with my friends… and learning so much about the engineering design process which I didn’t know or understand before.”

Another highlight was the interaction with teams from other states and countries. There were forty-six teams in total, including six teams from China and Macao. Through informal gatherings, the Sacred Heart team exchanged Idaho potato pins and had conversations with many other teams.

Dan Gado, Carol’s husband, shares that Carol has an “ability to motivate students to think ‘outside the box’ regarding researching futuristic technologies to solve problems.”

Carol and Dan feel very passionate about exposing middle school students to real issues that are currently affecting our world or may become a concern in the future. In Carol’s words, “These students will be the next generation of problem solvers. Our communities need creative minds to imagine the next steps and to wisely use technology to achieve sustainable growth and progress in the world God has entrusted to us.”

Gado added, “By learning about the many diverse engineering disciplines and their impact on their community, students begin imagining future possibilities and career paths.” Several past students have communicated that it was because of their exposure to engineering in the Future City program in middle school that they pursued an engineering degree after high school.

Seventh-grader Nora Glancey also shared the sentiment about Mrs. Gado and her influence on the program and her learning. Glancey said, “Having Mr. and Mrs. Gado as our leaders and mentors impacted my learning because they provided very good information and helped to show us how important engineering is and how much it impacts a city.”

Sacred Heart had a second team, made up of seven sixth-graders, led by the new middle school Science teacher, Mrs. Cheri Workman. After her first successful experience leading the younger team, she plans to carry the success forward and continue the tradition of competing in the Future City competition in future years.

Sacred Heart is very blessed to have staff dedicated to providing their students with so many opportunities in math and science.