A robotics competition brought together high schoolers from more than 150 counties to Washington last week.
The event, organized by nonprofit FIRST Global, aimed to bring young students together to develop their STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — skills, while also teaching them how to solve worldwide problems together.
Prior to the event, each team received the same kit to build a robot, which they brought to the competition in the U.S.
Building robots required students to work on their math and science skills, topics U.S. teens struggle with more compared with many of their international peers.
Students and their adult mentors from all over the world at the event shared with U.S. News their thoughts on the keys to success in math and science.
1. Be persistent: “Don’t give up,” says Felix Leonard, 17, of the Canadian team. Students may mess up when trying to solve problems at first, but it’s up to them whether they decide to try another way to solve it, he says. And if they do, they will improve their problem-solving skills — that will make things easier next time.
Rebecca Mzungu, 18, a member of Malawi’s team, tells students to practice. “It’s not easy, but the more you practice, the better you get at something you are doing.”
Perseverance has also been the key to success in math, science and life in general for Tejas Ramdas, 17, a member of the team from India. Robotics taught him that when he has a problem, it pays to work through it. “You fix one, another problem will pop up somewhere,” he says. “You just keep going at it.”
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2. Make connections: Sometimes students learn so much in class, they wonder how they will use these skills in the real world, says Frank Gauthier, the Canadian team’s mentor. But robotics gives students a chance to actually use formulas they learned in class, he says.
He recommends students find a program similar to the FIRST Global robotics competition if they want to get more interested in and better at math and science. The Canadian educator has worked with students who struggle in school but can still finish the robotics project strong. Other students jump in to help these students succeed.
3. Try experimenting: Students aiming to develop their math and science skills should try games and experiment to find something that piques their interest — don’t just read out of the textbook, says Harry Xu, 16, of China’s team. He loves STEM and loved working on the robotics project, he says, and thinks it’s a good way for all students to have fun while learning something.
Having fun is very important in learning, says Umer Farooq, a mentor for Pakistan’s team. To succeed in math, students need to consider there are often many ways to solve a single problem. Think very differently, he says.
Janet Esther Kapito, 20, a member of Malawi’s team, thinks people learn math and science skills better by participating in hands-on activities, instead of just studying the theory behind them.
Working on a hands-on project like the robotics one requires teamwork, too, and teaches students how to work together to solve problems, Xu, says.
And that’s a skill students can use beyond studying math and science. Nawres Arif, a mentor for the team from Iraq, says the competition was a great chance to show his students how peace can be achieved, because for that to happen, people must know and understand one another.
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Teams may have had communication problems since they didn’t speak the same languages, says Kapito, of Malawi’s team, but they learned how to work together at the event. “This competition is actually teaching us to work better with other people.”
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