LASA Robotics (team 418) had a very unique opportunity yesterday that I would like to share with you all.
The
American Youth Policy Forum plans a series of field trips to help state policy leaders learn more about high school redesign. It is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports the Honor States Grant Program, an initiative of the National Governors Association (NGA), by providing hands-on professional development activities to governors, their staffs, members of state boards of education, and other education leaders. You can find more about these trips by going to:
http://www.aypf.org/projects/statehsreformtrips.htm
On their most recent
scheduled trip the legislators visited Austin, Texas, and came specifically to LBJ High School / LASA. The themes of the visit was to discuss how to best forge public-private partnerships to improve graduation and college-readiness rates, and also about what Texas has done to increase the number of high school graduates with strong backgrounds in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).
As part of the STEM discussion, the legislators wanted to speak with our team coach, Tony Bertucci, about his nationally recognized robotics curriculum and also about the opportunities and benefits that competitive robotics (FIRST being a strong highlight) brings to a students overall experience. Team 418 treated the legislators to a personalized demonstration of several FIRST robots (from the past 3 years, unfortunately Phunky is still in transit) and spoke with them as a group and individually/personally about their learning experiences in the FIRST program and in their robotics education.
What makes this an even more unique experience for us is that we not only had access to our own Texas state legislators, but we had access to:
Representative Donald Blakey - Delaware
Senator Sharon Weston Broome - Louisiana
Senator Scott P. Brown - Massachusettes
Representative Hollis Downs - Mississippi
Representative Derrick Graham - Kentucky
Representative Mindy Greiling - Minnesota
Representative Scott Hochberg - Texas
Representative Avon R. Honey - Louisiana
Representative Joni Jenkins - Kentucky
Representative Sherra Lane - Mississippi
Representative Carol McFarlane - Minnesota
Senator Yvonne B. Miller - Virginia
Representative David Myers - Mississippi
Representative Dora Olivo - Texas
Representative Alice Hanlon Peisch - Massachusettes
Representative Frank Rasche - Kentucky
Senator Karen Spilka - Massachusettes
Representative Marsha Swails - Minnesota
Senator Jack Westwood - Kentucky
Senator Ken Winters - Kentucky
It was a real treat for us when they told us that they enjoyed our demonstration/presentation much more than anything else on their trip thus far, and after sitting in on their panel discussion about TSTEM and Public-Private partnerships I can certainly relate.
Anyway, we're excited that we had the opportunity to reach out to such a diverse group of legislators and could proselytize the FIRST message.
-Danny