The Sedona-Oak Creek School District’s fifth and sixth-graders filled the gym at West Sedona School with noise on Friday, April 26, as the Hovercraft Project spent the day teaching students how to build and subsequently ride a hovercraft while learning math skills and team building. The Hovercraft Project was founded in 2019.

“We travel as a family; we’re the only ones who do this in the whole world,” COO Jenni Chase said, describing their Sarasota, Fla.-based family business. “We serve about 120 schools a year; this is the first time we’ve been in Arizona.”

“My husband [Matt Chase] used to be a fifth and sixth-grade math and science teacher, and he decided that kids work best in project-based environments,” she said. “He was working on a friction unit in his science class, and the kids brought in an idea of a hovercraft. And so they started working on it, and he realized that they were learning more than just about friction, they were learning about teamwork and following directions and just learning things on their own without even having to be given instructions.”

The first part of the afternoon consisted of two hours of doing the calculations for the hovercraft skirts and cutting them to attach to the leaf blowers. Students had to work in teams and elect a leader.

“Matt tells the team leaders what to do, and the team leaders are supposed to get that information to their teams,” Chase said. “So they learn how to work together as a team and solve the problems as they go.”

The afternoon ended with a competition among the different teams and between the grades and the fifth-graders ended up winning on a technicality. One of the safety rules was that each hovercraft could get a starting push at the beginning of a run but the pushers had to keep their feet planted.

“The sixth grade thought they won because they got farther, but they had the pushers move their feet, which got them eliminated,” Chase said. “It’s fun in situations like that because the underdogs have won.”

The cost of the Hovercraft Project day was about $4,000, which was funded by the Scorpion Booster Club through their annual Casino Night Fundraiser that this year set a new record by raising $50,000 in February.

“There’s a big STEM focus at West Sedona School,” club President Heather Hermen said. “But the reason why we thought it would be good for the kids is [because] the fifth-graders are going to be going up to the junior high, and they’re going to be the little kids on campus. Why not get them in with the sixth-graders and do team-building to get them familiar with each other? … And the Hovercraft Project also addresses some things that are of concern in the schools. Each principal provided some things that they wanted the hovercraft team to work on. So they [focused] on school attendance, talking about bullying, being prepared for class and working together as a team.”

“One of the things that teachers said was that the sixth-graders especially have not even touched their cell phones,” WSS Principal Elizabeth Tavasci said. “They haven’t even taken them out of their backpacks. They’re so engaged in doing the project with their peers that they’ve just completely forgotten that part and are just having fun and learning.”

“We’ve been focused on growing community partnerships,” Tavasci added. “Our main community partner has been the [U.S.] Forest Service. They have really helped us to expand our network of people that we connect to. The Forest Service and Friends of the Forest helped us to put together community partners across the Sedona area that would align with each of our grade levels.

“The students have had these rich experiences of taking trips out to Beaver Creek and doing water sampling and water testing and water filtration or learning about pollinators and native seeds, and we recently had the Sedona Fire District come in to also help teach STEM principles.”