Can someone in the Irving TX area "draft" this young man?

[FrankJ]

Originally Posted by neshera

I don't know why I didn't think of this when I started this thread, but for Heaven's sake don't let him join FRC Team 16!

Team 16 totally needs to send him a tee shirt!! Wear it with pride to the white house.

Disclaimer: I am totally unrelated to Team 16 other than being an admirer of their program. I understand they are discrete as to where they wear their "Bomb Squad" tee shirts.

[ChuckDickerson]

What I’m trying to figure out is how the alarm on the clock went off in his backpack during his 6th period English class. The clock appears to be the AC powered innards with a 9VDC plug for battery backup. If it was in his backpack how was it plugged into the wall?

I am assuming he didn’t actually design/build a clock from scratch but rather assembled parts and pieces from one or more consumer alarm clocks (possibly broken) and put them together in this case and made them work. No matter what he did: design and build a clock from scratch, put broken pieces together, buy a clock kit somewhere online and solder it up, or whatever, I applaud him for good old fashioned inquisitiveness and creativity. His actions should be celebrated not punished. Back when I was a kid I had a habit of “taking things apart to see how they work”. This was encouraged behavior. If something was broken like an alarm clock, a microwave, a TV, a tape deck, a movie projector, etc. I always got to tear into it before it hit the trash. What happened to those days? When did this become something that would get you arrested for attempting to make a “hoax bomb”? Oh wait, I’m sorry, I forgot, I was a white kid.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by ChuckDickerson

What I’m trying to figure out is how the alarm on the clock went off in his backpack during his 6th period English class. The clock appears to be the AC powered innards with a 9VDC plug for battery backup. If it was in his backpack how was it plugged into the wall?

I am assuming he didn’t actually design/build a clock from scratch but rather assembled parts and pieces from one or more consumer alarm clocks (possibly broken) and put them together in this case and made them work. No matter what he did: design and build a clock from scratch, put broken pieces together, buy a clock kit somewhere online and solder it up, or whatever, I applaud him for good old fashioned inquisitiveness and creativity. His actions should be celebrated not punished. Back when I was a kid I had a habit of “taking things apart to see how they work”. This was encouraged behavior. If something was broken like an alarm clock, a microwave, a TV, a tape deck, a movie projector, etc. I always got to tear into it before it hit the trash. What happened to those days? When did this become something that would get you arrested for attempting to make a “hoax bomb”? Oh wait, I’m sorry, I forgot, I was a white kid.

Yeah, at first I thought that it was a miracle that I had never been arrested for something like this when I was a student. Then I thought about it... His skin color, his religion, and his name should not determine the severity of the punishment he received. He should not have been punished at all for this. Real bombs don't beep.

[FrankJ]

While i don't deny that skin color, name,... played an issue. Rigid policies, zero tolerance, embedded resource officers (police) have led to lot of silliness in school discipline - for everybody.

On the other side of the coin. He has received a ground swell of support.

[Doug Frisk]

Originally Posted by ChuckDickerson

What I’m trying to figure out is how the alarm on the clock went off in his backpack during his 6th period English class. The clock appears to be the AC powered innards with a 9VDC plug for battery backup. If it was in his backpack how was it plugged into the wall?

I expect that it had a nine volt battery connected while it was in his backpack. I also expect EOD removed it to safe the device.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

While i don't deny that skin color, name,... played an issue. Rigid policies, zero tolerance, embedded resource officers (police) have led to lot of silliness in school discipline - for everybody.

On the other side of the coin. He has received a ground swell of support.

True indeed. Kids like that deserve support.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Cory

I don't mean this as a dig at you, as I think what you're doing is great, but the culture change they need is to stop seeing any non-white person as a terrorist. It's got nothing to do with being more aware of STEM activities.

The problem isn't that they couldn't figure out he had a clock and not a bomb...it's that they saw a brown kid with both "Ahmed" and "Mohamed" in his name and freaked out because they're either subconsciously or outwardly racist/Islamophobic.

I bet a FIRST team full of foreign kids building amazing things and getting exciting about engineering would help the situation. Helping people relate to those they are prejudiced against is a good step.

[Michael Hill]

Something that hasn't been clear...if they actually thought this was a bomb, why didn't they evacuate the school?

[FrankJ]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

Something that hasn't been clear...if they actually thought this was a bomb, why didn't they evacuate the school?

Just shows the silliness of the schools position. They knew it wasn't an working bomb. Best case for them would be he intended to create a disturbance. Apparently no evidence of that either. It is a good thing it wasn't cold & Ahmed was wearing a down vest. No telling where he would be now.

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Michael Hill

if they actually thought this was a bomb

They knew it wasn't a real bomb. In their narrative, they were dealing with a kid who brought a fake bomb to school, and who wouldn't tell them why he built a fake bomb.

They treated him as uncooperative because he "...would only say that it was a clock and was not forthcoming at that time about any other details." I'm not sure what other details they expected, given that it was a clock.

Hey, you know what else is a clock?

It's all cleared up now, except for the part where the authorities don't apologize, and the part where the school administration reminds everyone that hoax bombs are still prohibited. Oh, and the part where the local government officials do nothing to take back their recent smears against Muslims.

[Michael Hill]

That's quite the bomb there, Alan! Also, I subbed in for my boss on his golf team yesterday. I hadn't golfed in almost two years. I did okay, but out of it I found my wrist bomb I lost two years ago in my golf bag.

[Foster]

Where we are at that since schools have been successfully sued, they have moved the tasks normally assigned to a harried Vice-Principal to the police. They have instituted a simple framework that says "anything out of the 99.99% norm, stop them and hand them over to the police (or what ever the police in schools are called in your area "community outreach officers"). You all have "school policy" documents that say this and you all (students and parents) recently signed one giving most of your rights away.

Sadly the students in the school are taking the brunt of this, which I feel bad about. They have the world looking on them going "Really?" Which is sad. I'm sure they have heard from all their social media friends about how it must be bad to go to such an idiot school.

I'm happy that everyone has reached out to the kid, but a better ploy would be "hey your school is lacking in uber geeks, let us help create more in your school. Here is money, people, clock kits, etc to help you up the way cool STEM ladder." Just think of the difference Mark Z could make coming to the school and speaking vs having one kid come on the Facebook campus.

The school is stuck. While they will most likely be sued, for them to say "Ok, we were wrong, sorry"; will only make it worse for them in court. ISD board same boat, stuck in a corner. Irving PD, stuck, stuck, stuck. While the public shaming has been bad, their deeper fear of them paying multi-million in judgements has them continuing to double down.

BUT THERE IS A GOOD SIDE. Now is the time for all of YOU to go to your schools and go:

"Hey we are tech nerds. We build all sorts of nerdy stuff that is really techy cool, like our robots (point at robot). Sometimes we have parts with us, think of it as pencils, paints and brushes for artists, musical instruments or sports equipment. You might look at a chunk of metal, black cans and wire and go "bomb", but it really is one of our awesome swerve drive wheels. So we are not trying to be disruptive, it's our cool stuff and we are excited and we want to share. Happy to fit under the zero policy, but we want our zero level to be at the same as paints, papers, hockey sticks, pom-poms, etc". Otherwise you will be in the center of a media storm that will not end for weeks and take all of us away from our biggest goal - education."

[runneals]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

Team 16 totally needs to send him a tee shirt!! Wear it with pride to the white house.

Disclaimer: I am totally unrelated to Team 16 other than being an admirer of their program. I understand they are discrete as to where they wear their "Bomb Squad" tee shirts.

Heh... Thanks for the idea Just sent the idea onto the coach of Bomb Squad

Also, I chatted a bit with FIRST HQ, and they are also reaching out, so it sounds like they at least will be joining FIRST Wouldn't it be cool if he could get on an FRC team with his friends who sound like they're taught by incompetent teachers?!?! Yet somehow they are named National AP District of the Year and “Top Digital District” for Use of Cutting-Edge Technology

[Carolyn_Grace]

This is an important discussion to have, and I'm really proud of our FIRST and Robotics community for having it.

The one point I disagree on is the bashing of Ahmed's teachers. I'm in my second year teaching, and it's ridiculous how difficult it is sometimes to actually teach my content when there's so many other things happening on a daily basis. Every teacher that I've come in contact with for the past two years of my career always has the best interests at heart for their students. Sometimes that manifests in drastically different ways.

I don't blame Ahmed's teachers. The teachers are part of a larger institute that needs to take responsibility, including administration and police. But I'm slow to point fingers at the English teacher. There's very few of us silly non-STEM English teachers in the world who even know what an Arduino even is.

So yes, let's educate. (I'm educating my co-workers regularly about STEM and Robotics), but please let's also do so in a way that doesn't bash the teachers, who have enough on their plate at the moment.

[marshall]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

This is an important discussion to have, and I'm really proud of our FIRST and Robotics community for having it.

The one point I disagree on is the bashing of Ahmed's teachers. I'm in my second year teaching, and it's ridiculous how difficult it is sometimes to actually teach my content when there's so many other things happening on a daily basis. Every teacher that I've come in contact with for the past two years of my career always has the best interests at heart for their students. Sometimes that manifests in drastically different ways.

I don't blame Ahmed's teachers. The teachers are part of a larger institute that needs to take responsibility, including administration and police. But I'm slow to point fingers at the English teacher. There's very few of us silly non-STEM English teachers in the world who even know what an Arduino even is.

So yes, let's educate. (I'm educating my co-workers regularly about STEM and Robotics), but please let's also do so in a way that doesn't bash the teachers, who have enough on their plate at the moment.

This is a really good point. As the pace of change for technology accelerates, it is up to us in the engineering tribe to educate those not in it about the wonders that are out there. My mom is a retired English/Language Arts/Social Studies teacher and I'm happy to say she is still learning new stuff, even today. She probably couldn't pick out an Arduino from a Raspberry Pi but she knows her way around an iPad and understands that microcontrollers are what make it all possible.