Lessons In Teamwork … From Middle-schoolers

“The only thing you do better than your brother is smell worse. We can smell your presence”.

I have been involved with youth robotics for 4 years with the First Lego League and the First Tech Challenge as a parent, coach and team administrator at times. When we heard this from the kids, we braced for a  really long season. We couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, we ended up learning a lot of things that can be taken back to work.

“What challenges are you facing? ... Primarily you”

These are the Space Muffins, a First Tech Challenge Team of middle and high schoolers. Their mission was to build a robot to do the tasks like latching a robot to a structure and lifting itself a few inches off the ground among others, as an exploring rover would do with a lander. They designed a string and pulley linear slide, used servo motors, Android sensors, and programmed in Java - pretty sophisticated stuff for 7th and 8th graders (barring the usage of tape sometimes!). As a rookie team last year, they were runners up for the robot challenge in a qualifying tournament. So how did they do it?

“There is trash everywhere. Why don’t you clean better dude”.

Primarily they have fun.  Why would they name their team “Space Muffins” otherwise, and not Cyberdyne? They are genuinely happy to work with each other. They have deep camaraderie, a wicked sense of humor which they are not afraid to use on each other; which is where a quarter of their time is spent. They are not quick to be offended either.

“Nobody taught me how to be smart. It just happened”.

They have confidence in their ability to learn to get things done. They are not afraid of failure. There are excited about success even if it is not primarily driven by them and are excited about the success of their team-mates. Every person has a lead role in some area. The youngest person in the team is the builder, one is a lead programmer, one leads the community outreach, one has the responsibility of making sure that the engineering notebook is in order and one takes the lead for design.  This makes the effort extremely collaborative.

“How does it take 30 minutes to get food from Panda Express. It’s supposed to be fast food”

Designing, building, and programming the robot for the challenge takes anywhere from 10 to 14 weeks. The kids start off by putting 2 hours a day, 4 days a week in the beginning to 4 hours or more per day for 5 days a week towards the end. This after a full day of school and homework. A lot of hard work that only comes with inner motivation. It is not pushed on them by “tiger moms” or “sports dads”. All for a few minutes of competition where 2 members represent the team and their weeks of hard time, under the gun in front of an audience of officials, parents, team-mates, and competitors. The pressure to do well is intense where each member is aware that a mistake in changing the arm of the robot mid-game or not aligning the robot correctly for their mission under time pressure can result in mission failure and loss of points. This has happened, robots have broken down and got stuck. They always had the mentality to get ready for the next round to do better. Team first!

“I am a master. I was able to do this. Can you do this? No. I’m the master - not you!”

I also have never seen any controversy over the members chosen to represent the team for the challenge. It is typically based on criteria like calmness and presence of mind under pressure, good motor skills,  and effort put in during the season; members rotate in and out of the role for different challenges and seasons.

This year’s team has Kunal Goel, Shyon Ganguly, Ojas Gupta, Vaibhav Rangan, Madhav Nair, and Ayan Chaudhry. Here is a practice run of stacking blocks for this year’s competition: https://www.tinyurl.com/SpaceMuffinsSkystoneRobot in a Silicon Valley garage.