High school girls build kick-### robots | The Verge

[Tim Sharp]

Let me preface this post by saying that I am all for girls in STEM. Our team is almost half female (12/30) and they are all valuable, contributing members of the team( I wouldn't allow them or anyone else to remain on the team if they weren't) . We would definitely not be the same without them and I wouldn't trade them for anyone.
It is team policy that, in the absence of extenuating circumstances, students are allowed to choose their jobs. We have girls on our Video Production, CAD/Design, Electrical, Controls/Programming and Marketing teams. We don't have any girls on our Fabrication team due to the simple fact that none of them was interested in it. If they had expressed an interest, they would be on the team without reservation.

With that said, I find this article disturbing. I can understand the desire to highlight achievement by girls in STEM, but I don't agree that it should be done at the expense of the boys. Consider this:

The girls started working with a robot that the boys had initially built. Almost immediately, they solved problems that the boys couldn’t. One example: the robot wouldn’t drive straight. The boys tried to correct for this by over-steering, but it wasn’t a real solution. The girls took the robot apart, identified a problem in the drivetrain, and fixed it. Now when the robot needed to operate autonomously, it could complete its tasks without of veering off course.

A person unfamiliar with FIRST would read this and assume that the boys were simply incompetent and needed the the girls to "fix" their mistakes.
As a FIRST participant, my first thought was that the autonomous problems were encountered during competition and the boys, "fix" was the best they could do given the time constraints of a competition weekend. Did the girl's "fix" occur under the same circumstances, or was it achieved in the relative calm of the shop between competitions? My point is, you can build people up and recognize their achievements without denigrating the work of others. If I were a male member of the team highlighted in the article, I would definitely feel like my skills and hard work had been minimized. I might even feel like I had been treated unfairly.

It is my job as a mentor to encourage, motivate and inspire ALL of my students, male or female, and create a cohesive environment where they celebrate the achievements of everyone. It is my philosophy that "Those that can, do. Those that can't, watch closely and do later", regardless of gender or anything else. In my opinion, in a team setting, an "us against them" mentality is toxic. Especially if the achievements of one group is framed against the failure of another.

This also stuck out to me:
They developed competition strategies without loud-mouthed boys and repaired the robot on the fly without having to defer to the strongly held opinions of the male members of the team.

Imagine the reaction if someone said, "they developed a bold competition strategy despite the timidity of the girls and made mid-competition changes despite the risk averse attitudes of the female members" .

The girls would be offended and rightly so.

The point of this whole screed is that, in my opinion, anyone who is bold enough to take on the mental, physical and emotional challenge of a FIRST season is entitled to respect. Celebrate the achievements of girls or any other under represented group at every opportunity. Just do it in a way that uplifts everyone.