PBLC Feedback Pizza

During the summer of 2024, I worked as a student assistant for Cal Poly Humboldt's Place Based Learning Communities, I was working closely alongside two peers to develop a week-long training for the student staff who would be working during Welcome Week. The goal of this pizza was having a tangible way of letting our trainees give us feedback, ask questions, or reflect on what we covered that day anonymously and without the pressure of speaking if they didn't want to. 

What I enjoyed about this was that I got to do a fun creative project that served a helpful purpose. Each topping represented a different prompt, and at the end of each day we had everyone add a topping to the pizza. This ended up working well, we went over each question and suggestion at the beginning of the training the next day. I made this pizza with the intention of it being used just for that week, but since it worked and the trainees enjoyed it, I ended up preserving the pizza for the office to potentially use in future trainings. I added wooden dowels and another layer of cardboard for stability, painted a layer of hard seal mod podge on the front of it, and laminated the extra toppings so in future years they can be reused with dry erase markers!

When the three of us pitched this inherently goofy idea to our bosses, it was met with pure excitement, they were immediately on board with us making a giant cardboard pizza for our training week.  For that, and for the many other silly ideas I had that were encouraged, I am incredibly grateful to the people at the PBLCs and I hope to continue using goofy ideas to solve problems and make things more engaging when I can.