Grand Rapids — A Coit Creative Arts Academy fifth-grade teacher’s new keycard hall pass system is helping regulate students’ trips out of the classroom, but that’s just an added bonus.
The real purpose, said teacher Martin Gando, is to spark scholars’ curiosity about electronics.
“It’s more about them seeing it and understanding that it’s something they could make. It’s more about the learning, for me and for them,” Gando said.
It’s “the thing that can open the door for students,” he said — which, on one hand, is quite literally what the system does. But it’s also true in another sense.
“If I was introduced to this when I was younger, I feel like I would have fallen in love with it,” Gando said.
‘Guardian of the hallways’
The system uses open-source Arduino hardware, affixed to the wall near the door, and keycards, one for each student in the class. When students hold their cards up to the unit — which features a small display with a green light on one side and a red light on the other — they can check out for 12-minute intervals, of which they get three per day.
When they check out, the red light turns on, signaling that someone is out of class. When they check back in, the green light flicks on, giving the all-clear to the rest of the class. Of course, students still have to raise their hands to ask permission to leave.
Gando, who developed the system, dubbed it “Lamassu Pass” after the mythical being symbolizing freedom.
Lamassu Pass — “the guardian of the hallways,” as Gando calls it — can log trips for up to two students at a time, but there’s no hard-and-fast rule that only two students can leave.
Though it’s not strictly enforced, the system helps students stay mindful about their time away from Gando’s room.
“The Lamassu Pass definitely helps because you can keep track of how many passes you use and how much time you have, instead of just going all the time and missing so much,” said fifth-grader Judah Haidys.
Classmate Hadiyah Triplett agreed.
“I have a feeling if we didn’t have Lamassu Pass, a lot of the kids would just use the bathroom as much as they could to get out of having to be in the classroom,” Hadiyah said. “Some of the kids don’t like school, I guess, so they’d probably try to skip out as much as they could by going to the bathroom. But I like school.”
Benefits All Around
Gando said the system also curbs biases among teachers, who may not always, in the moment, treat every request to leave the classroom equally.
“During the hustle and bustle of the day, it’s really chaotic, and when someone asks to use the restroom … you (may) feel like they’re overusing it or trying to get out of something, when in reality they haven’t left the classroom all day,” he said. “So this is fair. It’s good for the teacher and student, I think.”
Lamassu Pass was conceived a few years ago, when Gando was teaching in Iraq. He was working with a student he wanted to engage with in new ways.
“I was trying to find a way that I could find some enrichment for him, and I found this creative engineering course online,” Gando said. “When I came back (to Grand Rapids) I was like, ‘I want to learn more about this.’”
Though Gando doesn’t have a background or any formal training working with electronics, he’s always been what he calls “annoyingly curious” about it, and it’s blossomed into a major hobby. In addition to engineering projects like Lamassu, he’s also coaching Coit’s FIRST LEGO League robotics team.
“It’s part of my passion for the kids now,” he said. “I want to introduce as many as I can, who are interested. … There’s some kids where you show them a little bit and they just fall into it completely.”
There are other projects he’s working on, too, including a sound-level monitor that keeps a record of volume in the classroom.
‘It’s more about them seeing it and understanding that it’s something they could make. It’s more about the learning, for me and for them.’
— Martin Gando, Coit Creative Arts Academy teacher
Bring the Passion
Lamassu Pass is installed in one other classroom at Coit, and there’s a chance it could, at some point, expand beyond that. For now, though, Gando is still prototyping and working out the kinks.
His passion for electronics continues to broaden, and he’s glad he introduced it to his students.
“I just think that teachers should always try to bring out the things that they have unique to them,” he said. “There’s other teachers who are really good at other things, like gardening or crochet, and I think they should always bring that to school. Because, the passion, it will invite kids inherently.”
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