McMillan is one of the few middle schools in this area that offers engineering classes to students. There are both seventh and eighth grade engineering classes. Eighth graders are offered a special class that revolves around the SAME competition which involves a student lead class making a project to enter at the SAME competition in April. Mr. Mayberger is the teacher of the class he has been teaching since 1993. Mr. Mayberger said that he has been teaching this class for a couple years now and he said he enjoys it but the problem is some students aren’t used to taking responsibility for their own learning.
Matthew Dean, 8, said that he signed up for the class because it seemed like a fun class to take. Engineering really appeals to him because it he thinks it’s very interesting. He said it played a role in him choosing to attend McMillan. “Taking part in this class and using programs that real engineers and doing what engineers do in a middle school class makes me want to become and engineer,” said Dean.
Trent Bostwick, 8, said he thinks that engineering is great and it really interests him and he would like to keep moving forward with engineering as a career possibly. He said that engineering played a big role in picking McMillan and he said that it will be nice because it is like a chain because he’ll go to North to continue to do engineering and then go to college at UNO to become some type of engineer. “I want to take engineering a little bit further, and this year building the conveyor belts in class really made me get serious about engineering,” said Bostwick.
Rachel Kirschenmann, 8, said she enjoys engineering a lot but probably won’t grow up to become an engineer but she said that this class was very fun because it was student lead and she learned a lot. “Sometimes this class was confusing but I got threw it and learned a lot,”said Kirschenmann.