It is truly a pleasure to see good policy ideas in action. That was my experience this weekend when I attended a FIRST LEGO League Robotics Scrimmage, sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) and the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD). I attended the event last year, and was impressed with the quality and enthusiasm of the competitors, a few hundred middle-school students participating in after school programs around New York and surrounding communities.
What struck me this year was the large number of girls participating in the event. In fact quite a few of the teams (and overall winners might I add) were all girls. This included the “Lego Chicks,” an enthusiastic and intelligent crew proudly representing the Girl Scouts of Nassau County. This year’s competition included designing and programming a robot to meet a series of challenges as well as researching, developing and presenting an original scientific solution to a pressing environmental problem.
Watching scores of young girls use science and technology to solve problems was inspiring. It is not that all of the girls were rock stars, that all the robots performed perfectly, or that the research presentations went off flawlessly. In fact, there were a lot of missteps and a lot of all out mistakes. But these failures are precisely what made the event such a great success.
As I write in an article in Newsday today, girls have a great interest in science, but also a keen awareness of the obstacles facing them in entering science careers. One of the solutions, as the Girl Scouts of the USA has found through original research and as I discuss elsewhere, is to give girls opportunities to fail and build up confidence in supportive environments. This is exactly what was in play at the event this past weekend.
The process of programming a robot for a competitive setting is iteration instantiated. No team nailed any challenge on the first try. Everyone underwent a process of trial and error, of tinkering and adjusting to get the best results possible. Being able to engage in this process effectively, patiently and with awareness rather than frustration, is an important trait to teach would-be scientists.
This weekend I was able to watch several original research presentations that teams had prepared as part of the competition. Imagine you are 10 years old and enter into a very corporate and offical-loking conference room with 12-15 serious adults staring on. All eyes are you and your team and you have to commmunicate complex ideas articulately. One girl, a team member from the Bronx, struck me in particular. When it was her turn to speak, she forgot a few of the facts she had prepared. After several awkward silences, her team members bailed out. Afterward she was upset and crying. Her team rallied around her, and her coach gave her a pep talk. He said basically, “It’s ok. You got through it, and that is an accomplishment. Think about the things you did right, and what you’ll do differently the next time. And we have more chances to show what you know today, so think about what you want to do with that.”
This is exactly the kind of support, and opportunity to fail with grace and move on with strength, that girls interested in science need to hear.
