Potentials - July/August 2017 - 34
Good teachers have the training and temperament
to lead students gently through thought processes
and pattens that help them discover solutions on
their own, which helps not only to reinforce what
they've learned but also gives them a frame-work
to discover their own solutions in the future.
t he ga me boa rd, but t he rea l,
STEMmy meat of the competition is
centered around a project devised
and managed by the team itself. For
2016's "Animal Allies" theme, the
team decided, after considerable
debate, to create a solution designed
to protect outdoor cats from the
menace of neighborhood coyotes.
The students interviewed experts in
the field, including a doctor from the
San Diego Zoo, and worked through
various permutations and combinations of inventions that would protect cats by scaring off predators
without being a nuisance for human
neighbors. The team created a short
skit for the competition as well as a
project trifold board to explain its
research and solution.
"The project is really the focus
of the whole competition," Hammer
says, "and the teams work really
hard on finding a topic that's important to them and that they can
connect with. We would rather them
come up with something original and
authentic than something that they
just copied from somewhere else."
Managing a project is what, at
work, I find myself struggling with
every day, and there's a purity to the
LEGO Robotics team that is powerful
to experience. The students articulate problems, choose one, articulate
solutions, choose one, document,
and execute. Everyone looks to the
best within themselves and what talents they can manifest for the greater
good. As a team, they learn how to
work in sync, how to disagree agreeably, and, hopefully, how to trust each
other when things get tough.
W hat better lab can there be
for learning about human behavior
and team dynamics than by coachi ng children who have not yet
lea r ned how to fa ke t hei r way
through a boring meeting or how
to simulate consensus? Their emo-
tions and opinions f loat close to
t he sur face, a nd obser v ing a nd
coaching them helps me see similar
subtle reactions, expressions, and
needs in the behaviors of my professional colleagues.
Just as important for the team
is the articulation of its core values,
which are what they sound like: the
beliefs, behaviors, and practices that
the team will live by. FIRST has a
few guiding principles, including "coopertition," which drives home the
notion of respectful and agreeable rivalry among the teams at the competition as well as "gracious professionalism," which encourages them to
work together and with other teams
as colleagues.
In some years, emphasizing core
values requires as much attention as
the project itself. "We get reminded
every year that, no matter how mature the kids on the team are, they're
still nine or ten years old, and it can
be hard to for them to focus, to deal
with frustration, to be good winners,
and to keep their chins up when
dealing with adversity," McKinley
explains. "Some years, you learn to
build a robot; other years, you just
learn to work in a team."
It's a lesson that I do well to remember with my own team at work.
Adults generally are never called
upon to articulate their "core values," at least outside of the context
of a training session that can sometimes feel eye-rollingly inadequate
to solve any real-world problems.
What's great about the LEGO Robotics core values process is that the
values are articulated and then have
to be demonstrated. They're not a
mission statement as much as they
are a set of guiding principles for a
working group, where everyone won't
always get along and everyone won't
see problems in the same way, so
how do we make the best of everyone's contributions without taking
our frustrations out on each other?
What do we, as a team, care about?
The competition
Programming Coach Lee Clontz helps the team think through its programming strategy.
34
■
J u l y / A ugust 2017
IEEE POTENTIALS
FIRST competitions have a special
intensity, with the mental intensity
of a science fair crossed with the
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