San Jose Robot Team Event with Rocketship Public Schools
We had a fabulous San Jose robot team event with Rocketship Public School Administrators. An all female team who knew nothing about robots reminded us that having success building robots has as much to to do with great teamwork as it does with engineering or robot proclivity. “Ladies who Launch,” the team pictured above, completed the robot in a stellar time of 35:29. This puts them close to the top 5% of all teams! Considering the event has been delivered hundreds of times over three years to thousands of teams, that’s pretty good!
Our event was hosted at the Rising Stars Academy, a beautiful public school with solid steel beam construction, gleaming HVAC, and technology from ceiling to floor. It hosts TK to 4th graders and boasts an impressive 1.3 years of learning for each year of school attended. Another excellent example of how charter schools can impact the educational landscape in positive ways. Rocketship has thirteen schools throughout the bay area, as well as schools in Milwaukee, Nashville, and Washington DC.
The winning build team were methodical, proactive, and very supportive of each other. In fact, asking how each other was doing led to a near ideal distribution of talent and resources. People moved where they needed to go to help someone. Proactivity is the most difficult of human leadership skills, and this team demonstrated that this is also an essential skill as an effective school administrator. They continuously asked the questions “what next?” and “what can I do?”
It was a real lift joining the entire Rocketship team. They all completed their robots with joy and dedication, and may have set a record for screaming during the competitions. Luckily it was summer and the students were home, as I think other groups could hear us through the steel and concrete! Some admirable driving and fighting demonstrated by all, and who knows, maybe they will be using robots to discipline students one day?
