With almost 90 clubs, Jackson-Reed offers a variety of extracurriculars that would put any other high school to shame. Unfortunately, this often leads to many awesome clubs getting buried underneath the sea of options.
So, I decided to go out there and unearth some hidden gems that you might not know of, and as I scrolled through the list of clubs on the JR website, one immediately stood out: the Lego Club.
As I read the name, I recalled the hundreds of hours I spent playing with Legos as a kid: the yearning for a new set, the frustration of losing a piece, and the satisfaction of completing a set.
“Over the summer we got some old Lego pieces that the Help Desk interns organized, which eventually brought us the idea of starting a Lego club here at school,” said Leila Ackil, one of the founders and co-captain of the club.
Under the supervision of club sponsor, David Thompson, the Lego Club meets every Wednesday after school by the Help Desk, with students enjoying the opportunity to build Lego sets.
Builds have included the Disney Castle, the Taj Mahal, the Neuschwanstein Castle, a tiger, and soon the Notre Dame, which have all been generously donated by the PTSO.
As different projects take different amounts of time to complete – the Disney Castle took around two and a half months to finish whereas the tiger head was finished in only two days. Students are able to work on different projects they’re interested in.
To get a better idea of what a day at the Lego club is like, I went to one of their meetings and interviewed some members there.
As I helped set things up, I was astonished by the massive boxes of Lego bricks, with dozens of bins separating them by color and style.
Later, I sat down to help them sort the pieces.
Initially I was expecting this part of the day to be boring, yet I quickly realized that the process of separating them was rather “therapeutic,” as Mr. Thompson later described.
It was only when I sat there, holding those little plastic bricks in my hand that I finally understood that the Legos themselves weren’t the point.
What made the Lego club special was how Legos were a way to build real connections between the students as they worked together on big and small projects alike.
When discussing the future of the club, Ackil added that the club is excited to go on field trips such as the one currently scheduled to the Building Museum’s Lego exhibit. •