The Capitol City Robotics club recently competed in a world robotics championship in Dallas. The youngsters were surprised by the high-quality coding and craftsmanship of their peers from abroad. A duo from Taichung’s Mingdao High School in Taiwan built a robot that far bested the competition, and they won the world championship in the prestigious teamwork category.
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“We were overwhelmed,” said Michael Daza, an eighth-grader with the D.C.-based robotics club. But the disappointment didn’t last long. “Now that we know what to expect, we’ll be ready next time,” he said.
That’s the spirit.
No defeatist attitudes from these youngsters. No despair or hopelessness. In robotics, solving problems is the name of the game. And if the problem is systemic, they’ll design a new system if they have to. They’ll put together a new team. And fix it.
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“If you work together as a team, it’s a lot better,” said Zahra Merchant, a member of the club who is in fourth grade.
That would be good advice for a group like, say, Congress, too. But the youngsters were simply talking about the skills they were learning in robotics — skills they were honing for a future that at times seemed as full of promise as peril.
Just a few days after the D.C. teams returned home, a gunman massacred 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, about 350 miles from where they had been competing in Dallas.
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Like most people, the students were shocked and saddened. But as despair and frustration spread across the country, causing some adults to throw up their hands in hopelessness, the youngsters held fast to a belief that if you have the will to solve a problem, you will find a way.
“Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with a new idea, a new way to try to solve a problem,” Michael said. “I’ll usually get up and try it. I have actually begun to visualize solutions to problems.”
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Just making it to the Vex Robotics World Championship in Texas had been proof of that. All told, 20,000 teams from 50 countries had vied for entry. Only 2,300 teams from 36 countries made the cut. The D.C.-based nonprofit robotics club had eight teams qualify — five of them all-female.
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That was a big win right from the start.
Ryan Daza, a 45-year-old economist, quit his job as a data miner about five years ago and founded the robotics club. About 150 youngsters from schools throughout the D.C. area would meet on Sundays at a school in the District for practice sessions.
When the school was closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, Daza turned the basement of his home in Northeast Washington into a robotics workshop. He installed tables and benches. He purchased tools. He cleared out a sunroom to make space for the teams to test their newly constructed robots.
Members of the club would come to his home in shifts, adhering to social distancing and other virus protocols. For nearly two years, he worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to keep his club up and running. He purchased robotic parts and delivered them to members’ homes. He also found three garages in the city that the club could use to test the robots that were too large to operate in his basement.
He arranged tournaments remote and live; he found mentors and sponsors.
“I grit my teeth, squint my eyes, and my brain just says, ‘Do it,' ” said Daza, who is club member Michael’s dad. “If I fail, I adapt and try again. When you’re trying to create something that did not exist before, that’s what you do. Just keep at it.”
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The club continued to rack up wins at tournaments and eventually qualified for the event in Dallas.
Robotics is one of those subjects that can engage virtually any student, if properly taught. It promotes critical-thinking skills to solve complex problems through teamwork.
“In competitive sports, only 1 or 2 percent of participants can expect to become professionals,” Daza said. “In competitive science, it’s 100 percent.”
Despite the pandemic, the Capitol City Robotics organization has grown to more than 300 members. Kids as young as kindergarten are being taught robotics. And as they grow, so do their robots. Some are eight feet tall. Daza has run out of space. He needs an area at least as large as a basketball court to serve as a new home for the club.
There is also a waiting list of more than 150 people wanting to join the club. Who knows? A robotics program just might keep a kid away from a gun. Care about these kids now, while they need help. Don’t throw up your hands. Help them.
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By all means, pass whatever laws might help stop the killing. But don’t forget to support the living. The youngsters at Capitol City Robotics aren’t thinking about giving up. They are stepping up.
They didn’t gripe about how China and Taiwan seem more committed to teaching robotics in school than educators in the United States.
Nor do they complain about the unfairness of having problem-solving exercises that go far afield of robotics — such as how not to get killed by a gunman if you should find one on the loose in your school. Students in Taiwan are free of such wretchedness.
Each of the Capitol City Robotics teams have names — Michael is a member of the Techs; Zahra’s team is the Robokitties. Ila’s is called the Unhidden Figures, which is a way to signal progress and optimism. “Hidden Figures,” you may recall, was the title of a 2016 movie about a group of Black female mathematicians at NASA who only belatedly got credit for their role in making spaceflight history.
The nearly forgotten story of the black women who helped land a man on the moon
At Capitol City Robotics, about 75 percent of the members are people of color, and five of the eight robotic teams are all-girl.
“We are stepping out,” Ila said.
Walk with them.