MESA Student Blog

Welcome to our MESA Student Blog! Here you can meet some of our students, check out what our schools are doing, and learn more about our activities. We'll add a new entry- written by a new MESA school- every couple of weeks.

(Want to see blog entries from last year? Click here for an archive.)

November 3, 2009: Edison High School
October 1, 2009: Rafer Johnson Junior High School
September 15, 2009: Los Banos Junior High School

Have a comment? Email them to us! Be sure to include your full name and school. (We won't post full names online.)

November 3, 2009
Icebreakers and Fundraising
Posted by Edison High School (Fresno, CA)

To start off our year at Edison, our M.E.S.A. leadership came up with a fun ice breaker event for the M.E.S.A. students. This activity helped bring us together by incorporating communications skills with teamwork. We started the day off with a game of wheelbarrow race, but the catch is that one student is blind-folded. Communication was a key to success in this event. After that, the top 2 teams competed against each other to see who can get their team across the finish line on wooden planks. The winners of the contest were rewarded with a pizza party.


Getting to know each other

During the month of October, Edison High School held 2 club lunches where all the clubs at Edison sell food to raise money for their clubs. Edison M.E.S.A. sold pizza for both club lunches and raised a lot of money for future field trips and events.

Saturday Academy Group

On October 24th, a few of our M.E.S.A. students attended the 1st Saturday Academy of the year. The students participated in events like Engineering Design, solo math, and VEX Robotics. In the Engineering Design class, our students designed a toothpaste cap that would be more efficient than the original. Everyone had a blast at the 1st Saturday Academy.

Edison Leadership Team

October 1 , 2009
Busy Already
Posted by Rafer Johnson Junior High School (Kingsburg, CA)

This year's Rafer Johnson MESA group is off to a great start! During summer vacation, our MESA advisor took the leadership team to Shaver Lake for team building and bonding activities. We also discussed plans to make our MESA group more educating and enjoyable - exemplifying the true meaning of MESA.

The MESA students at RJJH are proud to report receiving an award from our CSU Fresno MESA Center of $300 for being the first middle school to enroll 30 or more students in the program. Leadership students worked hard during the back-to-school registration to make sure we had a chance at the cash award.

Problem Solving with Circle of Pong

After the school year kicked off, we held a mandatory parent meeting to discuss the MESA program, as well as the dates of Saturday Academies, MESA Day preliminaries, and the regional competition. We also held our first-ever RJJH MESA back-to-school dance to fund raise for our group. We thought there was no way to sponsor a dance like this than to give it a "Back to the 80's" theme. The dance was a big success. Over 230 tickets were sold, and our MESA parents helped by volunteering their time, decorations, and/or refreshments to be sold at the dance. A special thanks to Kingsburg SaveMart, who also donated snacks for the dance.

In MESA elective class, we had a guest speaker that talked about what college life is all about. She got our students interested in many colleges, and she arranged for us to take a field trip to College Night at the Fresno Convention Center. At College Night, our students saw that there are so many people wanting to get into college, and basically learned that it is very competitive to get into the college of their choice.


College Night	Spaghetti Bridges

Our MESA students are also hard at work preparing their first quarter projects for local competition, to see who will qualify for the MESA Day Prelims. We have students working on bridge building, windmills, and gliders. Students continue to work their way through the Design-Build-Test process as they analyze variables applied to their designs.

All in all, RJJH MESA has had a very busy start to the school year. We look forward to what the rest of the year has in store!

Rafer Johnson Leadership Team

September 15, 2009
Starting Off
Posted by Los Banos Junior High School

Bridge Competition
This year we started off with the Bridge competition. We all tried our best at the bridge, though some didn’t qualify. The ones that made it were very proud of their work. On Wednesday Sept. 9, Mr. Louie Lopez visited us and tested the bridges, even the ones that didn’t qualify. Many of our science and math teachers served as judges! For the Manila Mechanics the winners are as follows: 1st place - Jairo and Jose, 2nd place- Yamilex and 3rd place- Vanessa. For the Stick Together the winners are: 1st place- Alejandro, 2nd- Kaleb, and Alexander and Jasmine tied for 3rd. Congrats to all and see you at Prelims on March 13th!


Bridge Testing	Tutorials

MESA USA National Engineering Design Competition: Wind Energy Challenge
On September 14, 2009, we constructed a windmill out of tinker toys or using index cards and a pencil. The paper windmill was then tested to see how many pennies it could pull up. The winners were Bianca and Liliana from third period. Their outstanding windmill could lift 10 pennies in 6secconds. The windmill constructed out of tinker toys and cardboard is a bit more challenging but we took the challenge with pride. This windmill has to lift as much weight as possible in as little time as possible. It also has to move a 200 gram car 200 cm in one minute or less. This project is due on Monday September 21st. We hope to make it to Colorado, or at least to Regionals on April 24th at UCSC!


MESA Class	MESA Class

MESA Class	Student Leadership Team

Lego Robotics Competition
For the MESA Club members here at Los Banos Junior High, we meet the first day of every week during break to discuss upcoming projects, fieldtrips, grade checks, and changes in schedules. Our weekly enrichments are on Fridays after school or during lunch. We work on projects such as the paper, Popsicle stick, toothpick, and spaghetti stick bridges. We want to congratulate Alex for winning first place for the Popsicle stick bridge competition and going to prelims. His bridge exceeded the maximum force the machine could push, which was 400lbs! Currently we are working on the Lego Robotics Competition. See you at the First Fall Saturday Academy on October 24th!

The Los Banos Junior High School Leadership Team