Learning Festival in Lamar, CO — 0 mi, 0 ft
If I had a nickel for every time I have woken up in a sleeping pad circle on the floor of a church, I would have two nickels! Honestly, it is less than I would have expected, considering how often we stay at churches and how much our team enjoys sleeping pad circles.
For those who aren’t familiar, a sleeping pad circle is when we lay out our sleeping pads in a flower formation, with everyone’s heads facing the center and legs facing outwards. There is no functional use for this method, but it definitely makes our team happy and may have some aesthetic appeal.
We were all also pleasantly excited to sleep in for a little extra time, as we had a Learning Festival planned at the Lamar Community Building. For us, these Learning Festivals have become routine, especially since this would be our seventh, but I realize that we have not gone into great detail on our actual teaching or process for setting up these workshops, so I hope to shed some light on it in this blog.
I am responsible for planning out the Learning Festivals for the summer. In the months leading up to Spokes, this involved tons of emailing with directors of libraries, jails, and community centers, providing rough dates that we thought we could host a Learning Festival in the city. When the hosts confirmed availability, we began to work with the route team to finalize the days we would arrive in each city and lock in the date for the Learning Festival. Especially due to changing weekend dates, holidays, routes, and reading periods, it is virtually impossible to keep all of the same festival locations year-to-year, so this year we had to schedule two new locations. Once the locations had all been determined, we worked with each host to determine the infrastructure they have to host us, the food they are able to provide the students, the marketing support they need from our team, the registration forms for students, and the photo release for all participants. As you can imagine, this takes hundreds of emails to coordinate.
Leading up to this Learning Festival, I was personally a little bit worried, as it would be our first time leading a Learning Festival at the Community Building (we had led a Learning Festival in the local library a few years ago, but the library was on its reading period and was unavailable to host us). The director was extremely communicative, but there were no student registrations until two days before. I had worried that we would not be able to get enough students to host the workshop, but when I checked the registration form on the morning of the workshop, there were 30 students coming, ranging from 4 to 15 years old! We were ready to roll 🙂
To no one’s great surprise, our first order of business was visiting a coffee shop with delicious paninis and a billion coffee flavors. Did it make us a little late to our Learning Festival setup time? Yes. Was it delicious and worth it? Yes. Did we finish all our setup and start the Learning Festival on time anyway? Also, yes!!
Once we arrived at the Community Building, the Director, Ethan Settles, was beyond helpful in getting the tables and chairs set up for the workshops. We ended up settling on two rooms with two workshops being run simultaneously in each. We decided that Aarushi and Carmen’s chem/bio workshop would split the room with my electronics workshop, and Nate and Drew’s electromagnetism workshop would split the room with Nunu and Caroline’s design workshop. We transport all of our Learning Festival gear in two huge grey bins that Nunu was magically able to arrange, allowing us to stay organized from Learning Festival to Learning Festival. Shoutout “orga{nunu}zation.”
When the kids arrived, we performed roll call and then began with our now tradition of playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, Rockstar (shoutout to my awesome boyfriend, Noah, for the idea of having the losers of each match join the winner’s “fanbase,” leading to significantly more hype, hence the name, Rockstar). All of us tensed in suspense, waiting to see if Caroline would win the tournament for the THIRD time and crush the hearts, souls, and minds of 30 students.
To everyone’s great relief, the students were spared, and Caroline suffered her first and greatest defeat at the hands of the one and only Nathan Mustafa. For a bit, Nate kept winning, and we worried that the curse was passed on and that he would become the next RPS terrorizer of students, but alas, he was defeated, and a student won the tournament.
When we started the Learning Festival, we split the kids into four age groups, and I took one of the older groups first. My workshop centers around understanding circuits and powering components with electricity. The goal is for each student to build their own “magic circuit” using copper tape on a piece of decorated cardboard, where rotation of the circuit causes the circuit to be open or closed. This is done through a tilt switch, which connects the circuit when it is vertical and then opens the circuit when it is upside down.
It is always so fascinating to see how the different age groups approach my circuits workshop. The end result for the 5-year-olds is almost identical to the end result for the 15-year-olds, aside from the 15-year-olds implementing an additional buzz motor in their circuit. With the older kids, we dove into the chemical reactions that drive a Lithium-Ion battery, how electrons relate to electricity, how a diode works, and what terms like current and voltage mean. Both of the older groups demonstrated immense problem solving and creativity, creating unique circuit designs and figuring out how to attach the motors to the circuits themselves to make them buzz. It is always quite interesting to notice the level of understanding and knowledge that students have as they age through the school system, with words like electron and ion becoming understandable. Even the two older groups, which was just mostly a split between 6th/7th graders and 8th/9th graders, have noticeable splits in their characters, attention spans, interests, and interactions with the material.
After teaching both older groups, we had our pizza lunch break, aided by the great serendipity that the community building has a gym. This meant that the students could shoot hoops and play a game of Knockout with Drew, even if it meant that some of the five-year-olds physically could not toss the ball high enough to make it into the hoop. Other, less basketball inclined students, played some of the puzzles that Aarushi had brought back from India during our joint visit to the Center for Creative Learning at IIT Gandhinagar. Nunu also made a quick pit stop at McDonald’s to get our thirsty team some cheap fountain drinks.
We also got to chat with some of the parents during lunchtime, who shared their perspectives on the Colorado education system. They described the new schedule, where many students in southeastern Colorado go to school for 4 days a week, rather than 5. Though this eases the financial constraints on the school systems, it adds burdens to the parents, who must manage their work and childcare.
After lunch, I switched to teaching the younger students, and with this came a complete vibe shift. Suddenly, our group was holding hands to explain how electricity flowed through a circuit, I was painstakingly helping many students with the copper tape because they had not yet developed the required finger dexterity, and half of our group (including me) was doing cartwheels. The last one had no educational purpose, but I think it did keep the kids engaged!
One of my favorite things to do with the little kids is to have them “trick” one of the other mentors whenever they finish their projects. They excitedly ran over to Aarushi, with their circuits upside down, lamenting that their projects weren’t working. And then BAM!! They flip it right side up, turning on their circuits, and Aarushi feigns great excitement that their circuit is magically working! Thank you, Aarushi and other teammates, for always going along with the tricks and letting the younger kids feel the magic.
With the younger groups, we tend to stay at a higher level on the project. We discuss batteries, lights, motors, and electricity, with more exploration-based activities rather than teaching content. I always use “challenges” to let the students identify how components work rather than lecturing on each one. For example, to understand the LEDs, I hand each student an LED and a battery and challenge them to turn on the LED without any explanation. Usually, it takes a bit of time for the first student to figure it out, and quickly, the rest of the group follows. This strategy naturally lets the students figure out that the LED only works in one direction, prompting discussion on the positive and negative terminals of a battery. I do a similar challenge with the tilt sensor and motor, allowing the students to compete and identify their purpose.
What strikes me the most is that every single student, regardless of age, completes my workshop and finds something new to learn. I think that often, I notice younger children are underestimated in what they can accomplish. Though I do see them struggle with physical dexterity, I believe that the amount of information that a student can understand is only limited by my ability to simplify and explain it.
After teaching all four groups comes the dreaded end of the day: goodbyes and cleanup. The students and parents are always extremely sweet at the end of the day, giving us hugs and saying thank you for our teaching. It makes me happy to see the students excitedly demonstrate their projects to their parents and reminds me of how proud they must also feel to have accomplished multiple projects in a day.
In terms of cleanup, my workshop is usually a quick ordeal, but Aarushi and Carmen have to clean up the materials from two workshops, including the Monster Genome project, which they run for the younger groups and has small scraps of felt EVERYWHERE, as well as the Iodine Clock project, which has individual beakers of chemicals for every student. Their cleanup is far more intensive, so the whole team locked in to help them finish up.
On our way out, we passed our deepest gratitude to Ethan for his help in setting up the wonderful Learning Festival and for feeding the kids pizza. We also noticed a huge sign on the rotating marketing TV that said there would be Zumba that evening at 6 pm!! If you know me outside of Spokes, you know that Zumba is right up my alley. Of course, I immediately started rallying the team to join Zumba that evening, and quickly got Aarushi on board.
At this point, it was still only 4 pm, so our team separated to take care of some individual tasks. Carmen and Drew went on an adventure to do the laundry and cut off the the pesky bike lock that was wrapped up around Aarushi’s tire, Caroline spent some time blogging and working on finances, Aarushi contacted upcoming hosts to confirm our stay, Nunu put in our next Amazon order for team supplies, Nate spent time blogging and going to the gym, and I began to call restaurants for dinner for that night.
This entire trip, every time I call a restaurant to get us a meal, Nate makes a joke about having steak donated to us. Though he is fully being silly, I decided to take him up on this challenge. I called the local steakhouse, and they told us that they would happily give $20 in credit per person for our meal! The team was ecstatic, and with this exciting upcoming dinner in mind, Aarushi and I rallied Nunu, and the three of us set out to Zumba.
The Zumba class was extremely lit even if the three of us were terrible, and we enjoyed getting to move our bodies in a new way that doesn’t involve the same repetitive leg motion for 10 hours a day. Many comments were exchanged regarding our perceived cardio fitness, and how we all felt that it was easier than expected. To be frank, the targeted audience of the class was also a few decades older than us, so I am not sure if the credit goes to our physical fitness or to the content itself. See the video below for Aarushi’s demonstration of striking a few poses.
We were extremely inspired during the class by a mother with her 11 month old daughter, who joined halfway and eagerly passed her baby from hip to hip while hitting the dance moves with the group. Huge kudos to her and her extremely adorable baby, who had a smile and giggled the entire time. The full rainbow outside really helped lock in the awesomeness of the day 🙂
After Zumba, we rode our bikes back to the wonderful church hosting us and were given a huge surprise: Aarushi’s tire was newly cable-free!!
As it turns out, the fire department could not help Drew and Carmen due to “liability,” but JJ at the local Tractor Supply was happy to lend our team a couple of wire cutters.
I also noticed that our car was completely bare, with no bike rack or camping top, which made our car nearly unrecognizable.
With the dilemma resolved, our team finally changed and went to our long-awaited meal at the steakhouse. Nunu, Aarushi, and I spent a copious amount of time negotiating a 3-way split of 3 meals (to the bemusement and possibly slight annoyance of the team, who watched us go back and forth endlessly until we all compromised a little and settled on a Steak Diane dish, a BBQ Mac and Cheese, and a Salmon plate). Personally, I think sharing food is 100% optimal, as you get to try a little bit of everything rather than having to only pick one meal. Some of our teammates may not agree…
After filling our bellies, we headed back to the church and began our night routine of shower line and route preparation for the next day. Nate decided to play a prank of sorts on Aarushi, having her enter the subpar-smelling men’s bathroom to get the bath supplies (the women’s was painted pink and smelled like Vanilla), causing gagging from Aarushi and a LOT of laughter from Nate. I wasn’t there, but I heard it was pretty funny!
Finally, it was time for the team to turn in, excited for a full day of biking to come.
With lots of Learning Festival love,
Tatiana ❤
MIT Spokes 2026 
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