With the help of generous funding from the University of California of San Diego (UCSD), the UC High Listen Lab works to support the UC High community and other clubs on campus in the hopes of creating more student engagement.
Senior Xiaoyu Deng is a member of the Listen Lab project, and focuses on engaging classrooms. According to Deng, “We’re trying to increase community building activities within classrooms, so that students get to get to know each other better, and make new friends. We find that when students have a friend inside their classroom, they are a lot more engaged.”
Many clubs at UC High will be participating in the Listen Lab project. “We set up a goal form with the club presidents that are interested in applying for funding. Whoever receives the grant will be able to use it to increase their club’s engagement. Suggested methods for spending the grant money include field trips and cultural fair events,” said Deng.
The Listen Lab project has left a positive impact on clubs, especially those that started from scratch. “Community building activities can help encourage students to participate in more clubs and will allow students to connect with each other better. This can help students feel much safer on our school campus, and help them be more engaged in learning.”
School Connections Specialist Kristina Medina said, “The Listen Lab Project began at UCSD, through an organization called Create, which invited San Diego Unified High School’s to participate. The point of the project is to teach students how to become student researchers, give them the opportunity to do their research, and create a project that can help positively impact their community.”
As another member of the project, Sophomore Karina Lankhurst said, “The people leading the project will be everyone in the Listen Lab group, which consists of 17 students. The project will also be for the teachers and staff at the school. We’re hoping to increase engagement by creating more communities in classrooms, while making clubs more appealing, so that new students are more likely to participate in clubs.”
Medina said, “We meet every Tuesday morning before school, but we also meet many other times. We have a lot of projects going on, so when the students are getting closer to their deadlines, we end up meeting more frequently.”
“The biggest part of our staff training project was on January 8. The students worked on becoming trainers and taught all of the staff members how to do various community building activities inside of their classrooms. We’re hoping that students start to see more community building activities happening inside their classrooms as a result of the training given to teachers,” said Medina.
Lankhurst said, “The main purpose of the project is to create community in the class space, by using ice breakers and fun games.”
“I am the liaison between UCSD and our students here. It is a student-led project, and I’m here to give them feedback. It’s pretty cool to see what they have decided to do. As their advisor, they did all their interviews, and I sat back and listened. They should be starting to notify the clubs about how much money they received, and which clubs received any grant money, so that’s very exciting,” said Medina.