Why the Maker Faire Orlando Educator Opening Matters for Kids Who Learn by Doing
Last Tuesday, I knelt beside Javi’s desk as he pried the last rubber band off his cardboard pinball machine, the edges of the cereal box base crinkled where he’d glued and re-glued the launch ramp three times. We’d had 25 minutes for our weekly maker block, and an unplanned fire drill that morning had eaten 12 of them. He didn’t yell or cry, just tucked the half-working flipper into his backpack and said, “It never gets to be done, anyway.” That same afternoon, halfway through a stack of multiplication quizzes and a lukewarm iced coffee, I got the group email: Maker Faire Orlando is hiring a full-time educator to run their year-round youth maker program, and I’ve been turning both moments over in my head ever since.
I’ve chaperoned my 4th grade class to the faire for four years running, ever since I started teaching at an elementary school just east of downtown Orlando. It’s held at the Central Florida Fairgrounds every October, and the whole place smells like sawdust, fried Oreos, and hot glue. Kids drag PVC pipe marshmallow launchers behind them as they run between booths, 4-H robotics teams tweak their bots between scrimmages, and a retired engineer sets up a whole row of life-size dinosaurs built entirely out of recycled Lego. Last year, Javi showed up with his abuela, who works cleaning hotel rooms out by Disney, and spent three straight hours at the open student build station troubleshooting a clunky solar-powered phone charger he’d started building for her. She waits 45 minutes for the bus after most shifts, he told the volunteer helping him, and her old charger dies halfway through. He soldered his first wire that day, and when the charger finally held a 10 percent charge, he lit up so bright you could see it across the tent. A few weeks later, she brought a bag of homemade pork tamales to the booth to say thank you.
Back in the classroom, Javi’s report card notes say he struggles to sustain attention during independent work. Half his math worksheets get turned in with only the first three problems filled in. But when he’s building something he cares about, he’ll lean over a pile of cardboard for 45 minutes straight, measuring angles over and over, calculating how much force he needs to get a marble up a ramp, doing all the math he won’t touch on a printed quiz. He’s far from the only kid like that, but most weeks, we barely have space to let that kind of work happen.
After I got the email, I pulled up the job posting out of curiosity. It’s not just a gig running craft tables for one weekend in October, which is what I assumed at first. The person hired will run after-school maker pop-ups at 12 Title I elementary schools across Orange and Osceola counties, lead week-long summer camps for kids who can’t pay for private STEM programs, train classroom teachers how to tie low-cost build projects to their required lesson plans, and curate the youth maker showcase that takes over one whole building at the October faire. They’ll also manage a shared library of tools and donated supplies, so teachers don’t have to buy hot glue sticks and cardboard cutters out of their own pockets.
I used to think maker time was a nice extra, something for kids whose parents could afford $300-a-week coding camps or fancy home 3D printers. I used to schedule all our build projects to fit into one 40-minute block, and toss half-finished work in the recycling at the end of the period because I didn’t have anywhere to store it. That changed three years ago, when I fell into conversation with a retired tech teacher at the faire. She told me to spend $30 on a lidded plastic bin, label it “works in progress,” and let kids tuck their unfinished projects there to come back to later. I did it the next week, and it changed the whole tone of our maker block. I stopped opening check-ins with “Are you done?” and started saying “What do you want to test first next time you work on this?” That small shift cut down on frustrated tears and abandoned projects by more than half, as far as I can tell.
For parents and caregivers who want to try this at home, you don’t need fancy equipment or a dedicated playroom. I send home a small maker bag once a month with every kid, stuffed with clean recyclables I collect from the teacher’s lounge—paper towel tubes, cereal boxes, produce rubber bands—plus a roll of masking tape and a simple prompt: “Build something that solves a small problem in your house.” There’s no requirement to bring it back, no grade, no expectation that it work perfectly. One student built a rack to keep his little sister’s sippy cups from rolling under the couch. Another rigged a tiny LED light from a broken string of Christmas lights onto a bookmark for his grandma, who reads after everyone else in the house is asleep. The whole project costs me less than $10 a month out of pocket.
The other small shift that works for both classrooms and kitchen tables: don’t step in to fix a broken project right away. I used to rush over the second Javi’s ramp collapsed, point out that he’d used too much glue on one side or cut the angle too steep. Now I just lean against the edge of the table and say, “That fell faster than I expected. What do you want to change first?” Nine times out of 10, he already knows what went wrong. He doesn’t need me to solve it for him; he just needs someone to notice it broke, and not tell him he’s out of time.
The gap this Maker Faire Orlando role fills is one classroom teachers can’t cover on our own. I have 28 kids and a mile-long list of required standards, tests, and safety drills to get through every month. Most of the area’s lowest-income schools cut their dedicated art and STEM coaching positions after 2022, when district budgets came in tighter than projected. I thought about applying for the role myself, but the schedule requires two evening events and one weekend shift a month, and the pay doesn’t quite cover the extra childcare I’d need for my 5-year-old. Instead, I forwarded the posting to three people I think would fit: a former district STEM coach who was laid off last year, an art teacher who runs free weekend workshops for kids staying at the local family emergency shelter, and a former student of mine who graduated from UCF with a mechanical engineering degree last spring and already volunteers at the local Boys and Girls Club. I told all of them the same thing: this job doesn’t require a list of fancy competition wins or a closet full of high-end tools. It just requires knowing that some kids will spend three hours focused on a build when they can’t sit still for 20 minutes of a lecture, and that not every kid wants to build a robot. Some want to build doll furniture, or skateboard racks, or a phone charger for their grandma.
Yesterday, it rained all morning, so we had indoor recess. Javi dragged his pinball machine out of the works-in-progress bin, and three other kids pulled their chairs over to watch. He’d added a second popsicle-stick flipper the night before, and they got three full marbles to run all the way to the bottom without getting stuck before the launch rubber band slipped off. He whooped and high-fived the kid next to him, then leaned down to rummage through the supply bin for a thicker band to try after lunch.
I don’t know who will get hired for the Maker Faire Orlando educator role. I don’t know if the school board will vote to add more enrichment time to next year’s schedule, or if budgets will open back up for the positions that got cut two years ago. There’s no neat fix here, no big win that wraps everything up. But right now, the pinball works for three full runs. That’s more than we had last week.
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