Hosting a Virtual FIRST LEGO League Challenge Tournament
Help me give my students the certificate frames, card stock, mailing supplies, and pre-paid postage necessary to host our FIRST LEGO League Challenge Tournament.
$729 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
My school district has over 15,000 students with large numbers of Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Asian, Filipino, and Polish students. There are 51 different languages spoken at home, and we are a suburban school district surrounded by urban school districts. We pride ourselves on offering many opportunities for our students so that they can grow academically, athletically, emotionally, and socially.
Our high school has 3,300 students, and we offer 25 varsity sports and 3 varsity academic competition teams, including our FIRST Robotics Team of which I am the lead mentor.
Part of the FIRST Mid-Atlantic District, we will be competing in FIRST Rise: Infinite Recharge. Our 5-foot, the 120-pound robot has won numerous engineering awards and qualified for the FIRST Championship five times.
The National Center for Education Statistics (2016) attributed living in poverty during early childhood, in part, to education-related deficiencies, inadequacies with physical and cognitive development, and disparities regarding access to healthcare. These students are five times more likely to drop out and 13 times less likely to graduate high school on time. Over 50% of our students live in poverty, but adding positive school-based relationships greatly increases the desire to graduate and internal motivation.
My Project
Every November, our FIRST Robotics Team has hosted a middle school robotics (the FIRST LEGO League Challenge) tournament with the Montclair Society of Engineers. This year, however, due to Covid, we have been unable to host this tournament face-to-face. We have moved the date to January and we are now hosting the tournament virtually.
By hosting this tournament virtually, our students have additional problems that they need to solve because we will not be able to just hand the teams their certificates and awards.
My high school students are the referees, they are in charge of hosting each of the teams, and they look forward to working with the teams each year. This winter, they will still referee and need to learn all about the game, but they will also have to watch the matches virtually, score from a pre-recorded video, and speak with the teams in real-time. This challenge will give my students the opportunity to take leadership positions, hone their organizational skills, and understand the minute details needed for running these types of tournaments. They look forward to this opportunity each year and I cannot wait to be able to fulfill this experience, even if it is virtually.
Thank you so much for providing the card stock to print the certificates, the frames for the awards, the envelopes for the certificates, and the pre-paid USPS shipping boxes and envelopes for the teams to receive their certificates and awards the following week.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Dewar Dituri and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
