The 5 team members are 9 and 10 year old kids. There are 2 girls and 3
boys. Each of them have a distinct look and also have a distinct cultural/ethnic/racial
background. However, in spite of all their differences, they have banded
together to do some cool robotic missions together.
Today, they had a practice
tournament and I got to be part of it. I have been at LEGO League tournaments
before with ASid. So, the robotic part was not new. The new experience was the
practice aspect of it all. I especially enjoyed sitting in on the teamwork part
of it.
A young mentoring team of
Grade 11 and 12 students asked the 5 kids to split themselves into 2 teams. And
predictably, they divided themselves into 2 teams of 3 boys and 2 girls
each respectively. Much confusion and humour ensued from this partition of the core
team. The kids got to learn valuable lessons about teamwork. Then, they had
this "interview" session where they were asked a few questions. The
most interesting was, "What is your understanding of Gracious Professionalism?"
At which point, all 5 kids exclaimed
with:
"Never heard of
that!"
They were encouraged to think
about it and arrive at an answer and they were able to mumble something about
being professional!
I got curious and checked out
the phrase. Turns out it is a phrase that is registered under FLL's Core
Values. It had another interesting word registered as well - Coopertition. I guess that would be
cooperative competition.
At the end of the day, I got
to learn along with the kids. They were no less than graduate students in terms
of all the research they had to do. They had to also plan their design. On top
of that, they had to learn to code and program. They had to solve problems when
their designs failed and their coding/programming didn't function as planned.
But above all, they had to work together. And
they did!
Hans, when he joined the
team, absolutely believed that it was all about building cool LEGO structures. When
he realized how much "boring" work was involved, he almost quit.
Today, I am sure he was happy that he kept at it. Next month is the actual
tournament. I will definitely be there to cheer Hans and his teammates on.
And I will never forget their
answer to the very last question they were asked as a team: "What is so
special about your team?"
They almost replied in unison
like they had practised it several times before!
"We are the youngest and
the smallest team!"
But they showed tremendous
growth in one day. They went from bickering with each other to helping each
other.
In that sense, one mission accomplished!
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