There’s No Place Like Home … at Goodrell
Goodrell 8th graders and East High Ambassadors assemble a Safe T Home.
Rome wasn’t built in a day but Safe T Home, now that’s a different story.
Tuesday at Goodrell Middle School a combined effort mounted by 8th grade geometry students, the East High Ambassadors and a pair of Iowa-based organizations constructed a complete Safe T Home from the ground up in the school’s courtyard where it will stand for the rest of the school year as a teaching tool before it’s dismantled, moved to the state fairgrounds and reassembled as a demo at the World Pork Expo.
Safe T Homes were engineered by Sukup Manufacturing Co. in Sheffield, Iowa. They are circular dwellings made of the same galvanized steel used in grain bins, Sukup’s primary business, and were inspired by the Haitian earthquake in 2010 that left more than 1.5 million people in the impoverished island nation homeless. The Global Compassion Network, a nonprofit headquartered in Eagle Grove, Iowa, took the humanitarian project from there. GCN has delivered and erected more than 100 of the sturdy, spartan structures in Haiti since 2012. That may not rival the Roman Empire but it’s the difference between life and death for three Haitian villages. Expansion has begun into Peru and Kenya, too.
How and why did Goodrell get involved?
“We were looking for a geometry modeling project,” explained math teacher Eric Galvin. “I got to thinking about minimalist homes but most of them are too expensive. Then I discovered the Sukup Safe T Home. When I contacted them they put us in touch with GCN and here we are.”
Besides the geometric aspects of diameters and angles and radii, etc. the Safe T Home is perfectly suited for other elements of Goodrell’s International Baccalaureate curriculum.
“After the 8th grade math classes take their turns out here helping with the construction they will all gather in the auditorium later for a presentation from GCN about the humanitarian work they do,” said Galvin as power dills bolted the roof that doubles as a rainwater reservoir into place over his shoulder. “That ties right in with the IB community service element and the global emphasis of the program.”
Goodrell IB Coordinator Amy Taylor and Galvin have a vision for the Safe T Home going forward. Even though this particular one, the school’s prototype, is portable and will move on at the end of the year along with the current batch of 8th graders, they expect the steely huts to find a home at the school.
“What we’d like to do is build one every year, use it for a time (environmental science and art classes are a couple of other obvious applications) and then recycle it back to you guys to send it wherever you need it,” Taylor told GCN missionary Mary Graham Tuesday morning, who was intrigued by the possibilities.
This puts a whole new slant on the concept of temporary classrooms that were in use at some district schools until the ongoing Schools/Students First capital improvements campaign retired them. However long the utilitarian roundhouses are in service at Goodrell, they will have plenty of useful life left in them wherever they go next and whatever purpose they serve. According to the Sukup specs each Safe T Home should last roughly 75 years and can withstand winds of up to 130 MPH. Not a bad return at a cost of $5,700 per unit, the going rate paid by relief organizations like GCN.
Be it ever so humble, “efficient, compassionate, durable, and very cost effective,” according to the GCN brochure, there’s no place quite like a Safe T Home.
