Woodlands teen expands free robotics classes

Kabir Jolly has taken over his family’s formal dining room table for a few years now. He once used the table to work on his own robotics projects, but the space has transformed into a teaching setup.

Jolly, 17, is a senior this fall at the Academy of Science and Technology at The Woodlands College Park High School. He’s involved in the science fair as well as business and entrepreneurship clubs, but outside school he’s focused on sharing his passion for robotics with other enthusiasts — from his own community to India.

For three years, he’s been hosting two free workshops per year to help teams around the area learn more about FIRST LEGO League, an international robotics competition for students ages 9 to 14. Many schools in The Woodlands area have their own teams.

“Between 80 and 100 students and teachers come to these workshops, so I start things off for the teams and then do more personalized training throughout the year,” said Jolly, who is interested in a career in computer science or artificial intelligence.

The next “Robotics EV3” workshop, kicking off the robotics season, is scheduled for 9 a.m. Aug. 17 at Lone Star College-Montgomery.

Jolly sends a newsletter every few weeks to the teams, does video conferences with teams too distant to reach in person, and serves as a mentor. He does this all for free.

“I’ve learned a lot of presentation skills. With communicating to a larger crowd, you have to make sure that everyone is not only on task but engaged and having fun learning the concepts,” Jolly said.

Jolly’s interest in and knowledge of robotics has grown since he first joined a team as a fifthgrader. Though he has aged out of the FIRST LEGO League competition, he recognized the value of having mentors when he was younger.

“Having two or three mentors to reach out to helped me so much, and I was able to see our team grow so rapidly,” Jolly said. “I’m not going to be able to use

my LEGO robotics skills anywhere else other than being able to start younger children off on their own, so this is one way to give back.”

In addition to teaching, Jolly has also seen success helping teachers and coaches at the area’s Title 1 schools, which generally have high

enrollments of economically disadvantaged students, establish their own clubs and courses.

Jolly’s mother, Damini Jolly, who teaches robotics at the Rubicon Academy just outside The Woodlands, said she sees the value of someone like her son giving their time as the field becomes increasingly popular.

“(Robotics) came so fast to the schools, and the training was lacking. The teachers believe in the program, but there can be a disconnect. ( Jolly) really stepped in to fill that gap,” Damini Jolly said. “I hope he encourages other kids to do that, too.”

Jolly taught his first in-person classes abroad in India this summer to two groups of about 20 students each. While he was in the country visiting family for about 10 days, he reached out to a robotics

institution to see if its leaders were interested in his workshops. They were.

“As soon as I said I wasn’t charging anything, they asked me to teach at all of their locations. I chose two cities to teach at, and the kids brought their parents as well. They were enthusiastic,” Jolly said.

In India, Jolly saw that not many kids had robotics parts of their own and the teachers didn’t have an established curriculum. So he tried to share as much of his knowledge as possible.

“It was super exciting, because it was the first time for something like that. Before, my international outreach was just video calling because I can’t travel everywhere,” Jolly said.