"We wanted to give them the chance to learn about the basics of architecture, engineering and design with a project that would appeal to them, explained McMullen, who, along with Hara, will be in the class three days a week for two weeks as part of Architecture Adventure, a special program on various aspects of design funded privately by the Oak Park Education Foundation. The program kicked off in Berton's class but will soon be implemented in other classrooms at Julian as well as at Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School.

Architects Hara and McMullen worked together professionally on a real-world project to make Chicago Public Schools ADA compliant. Now they're teaming up again to teach middle school kids the basics of architecture.

"We don't want you all to grow up and be architects because then you would all move to Oak Park, because that's what all architects do, and you would put us out of a job," McMullen joked. "But we do want you to know what architects do, as well as engineers." Armed with pencils, rulers and newsprint, the students are drawing their beach houses. "You must have a kitchen, bathroom windows and an entryway," they are instructed.

Working on her entryway, eighth-grader Caitlin Hodes said, "I want a garden pathway." Rebecca Samuels said, "I want a double staircase, like the old-fashioned ones."

"I want a trap door!" announced seventh-grader Jason Guzman, "and if it is on a hill, an elevator."

Seventh-grader Daniel Sanchez said, "I want a wooden porch in the front and the back with a sliding door."

Brendan Donley was drawing in a bathroom. "I have a sink, toilet and shower," he said. "But it isn't going to be a regular square shower; it's different."

Joe Berton nods enthusiastically. "I am excited to have you here," he says to the two architects. "You are providing fresh faces for these kids to learn something new and different." Berton says his students are surprised when he shows them artwork he has created or talks about shows he is in. "They are shocked that teachers have a life," he laughs. "Just show them what you have created in your job and gotten paid for," Berton recommends. McMullen tells the class about a fountain she created in Midway Gardens; Hara talks about a building in downtown Chicago.

"A team of educators, architects, and Oak Park Education Foundation board members convened nine times over several months to create an innovative, curriculum-enriching program for our middle school students," says Deb Abrahamson, executive director of the Oak Park Education Foundation. The end result was enthusiastically approved by the Oak Park Education Foundation board and endorsed by the District 97 administration.

'My father was an architect, so I have wanted to be an architect for as long as I can remember," says Drew Nelson, a member of the Architecture Adventure design team and owner of WDN Architecture of Oak Park. 'Architecture encompasses just about everything, and you need to know about a lot of things," he says, "making it ideal for a teaching and learning education program." Nelson says targeting middle school is ideal because "it is the first chance students have to delve into a subject." It makes perfect sense, he believes, to offer this kind of program here because "Oak Park is known for architecture, as is Chicago. As we add field trips, it will be easy to go right in our own backyard, so to speak."

Architect Frank Heitzman, another member of Architecture Adventure planning team, teaches architecture at Triton College in River Grove. "Triton College is having its first-ever architecture program for middle school students this summer," he says. "The week-long program will give kids the opportunity to build cardboard models and design concepts." Heitzman hopes the program will eventually extend all the way down to kindergarten.

Architecture Adventure team member Ken Floody is a structural engineer involved with his alum, The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He believes it is important to continue to promote engineering as a field, "especially as computer engineering overshadows the other, more traditional engineering fields." Floody has an easy way to illustrate how architects and engineers work together. "I explain the relationship of architecture to structural engineering as you can have a good looking kid, a handsome boy, but if I reach in and pull out his skeleton then what? That's how architecture is-if you design a great building, you need to have the structure to support it."

Team member Adrienne Winner was inspired to become an interior architect by her parents' home in Champaign. "We lived in an architectural house, and my parents entertained a lot," she said. "I saw how people reacted to the specially designed home, how comfortable they were and what a difference design makes in people's lives." Winner designs corporate and residential interiors.

"I design raw space," she says-entryways, walls, reception areas, sequencing of cubicles. Winner is especially involved with green architecture. "Discarded office carpeting occupies a lot of landfills," she notes. Because of that she is a proponent of using cork and bamboo flooring. She also insists all discarded carpeting be recycled at a special plant.

In Berton's Applied Arts classroom, Dontae Coleman designed a triangular floor plan. "I am going to hang a football from the ceiling because that is my favorite sport."

"Mine is a rectangle, and I am going to hang a college banner from Hawaii with the number 12 because that is where my dad played basketball," says Lasean Richardson. "He could have made it to the NBA except for the mom situation-he didn't want to leave her. Put that in there," he instructed this reporter. "I'm putting a basketball court in the basement, MJ style."

A fellow student looked over Richardson's shoulder at his design. "That's smack!" he said approvingly.