Learning and growing together with robotics
Private Christian campus, school for students with disabilities join in teams, allowing students to learn patience, be included
They share a campus — now they share a robotics team, too.
At the beginning of this school year, All Nations Community School and Journey School for the Uniquely Gifted and Talented in Oak Ridge North decided to combine students onto one robotics team to learn and grow together.
All Nations Community School is a Christian private school with a bilingual Spanish and English program for students in prekindergarten through eighth grade. Robotics has been an integral part of the school’s focus since fall 2019. Journey School opened in 2019 and serves students ages 3 to 21 with learning and developmental disabilities.
As Journey students get older, they enter a transitional phase. The school works to equip them with skills to help them become more independent. When All Nations learned about this, Stephen Michalik, the STEM coordinator for All Nations, said the school thought its established robotics program would be a good fit for students to learn STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and social skills.
Three students from Journey have joined the All Nations robotics program.
“We were very intentional about what a team would look like that has neurotypical and neurodiverse (students), and just wanted to make sure that there was that level of comfort where they’re still learning from each other, learning that we all think and do things differently at different levels,” Michalik said. “It’s just been so cool to watch the growth.”
Teaming up with Journey students has taught All Nations students patience, Michalik said.
“It’s so easy for them to get wrapped up in that competitive spirit,” he said “But it’s really forced them to think about not just themselves but their team as a whole and who is on their team, and using the gifts and abilities of their team.”
Working with All Nations is a great opportunity for inclusion for Journey students, said Carrie Perez, counselor and administrator with Journey School and now one of the robotics coaches.
“Our kiddos are so excited to participate in an extracurricular activity outside of school with their neurotypical peers,” she said. “That’s a totally new situation for them, so it’s really helping them to feel comfortable with other kiddos and feel comfortable doing something new, which can be hard sometimes for some of our students.”
The teamwork aspect has helped Journey students improve their self-confidence and self-esteem, Perez said.
Victoria Valmain is a teacher at Journey, a coach on the robotics team and mother to one of the students on the robotics team, Hayden. Of the students who participate, Hayden has the least amount of oral language and communicates a lot by sign language.
“It has been really awesome to see his teammates accommodate him and allow him to express himself either with his communication device or just by letting him handle the robot, make modifications and contribute without speaking,” Valmain said. “One of the biggest takeaways for me, probably more as a parent than as a teacher, is the empathy and willingness to work with our students that I’ve seen in the All Nations students. That has been a real blessing and a heartwarming experience for me.”
When All Nations started its robotics program, it had 16 students on four teams. Now, the school and the program have grown to 18 students on five teams. Michalik was the only coach last year, but with the growth of teams, the program added five more coaches. This year, because of COVID-19, a lot of schools are no longer competing in robotics tournaments, even as many have gone virtual. But All Nations has managed to make it work.
Michalik applied for a grant from Rice University to promote STEM engagement and was awarded the full amount — $5,000. The funds have been used to help the teams pay for all the necessary equipment and registration and other fees related to the tournaments they have competed in.
As part of the application for the grant, All Nations had to affect the community in some way. The school’s proposal included a robotics summer camp for people in the Oak Ridge and The Woodlands areas. Depending on how the pandemic develops, Michalik said, the school would like to offer the camp this year.