This project is part of the Black History Month celebration because it supports a Black teacher or a school where the majority of the students are Black.
My Students
Our inner-city, All-Boys school focuses on STEM curriculum for Middle and High School boys. Our STEM classrooms are intensely competitive environments, where our boys have successfully applied math, science and physics to win regional, state and national competitions in engineering and robotics
Our students are Title I students that come from inner-city neighborhoods.
Most come from underprivileged households but they have parents that care and want to see their boys succeed. In spite of the fact that most of our students ride the bus each day to and from our school, we manage to get kids committed to high academic achievement and they put in extra time whenever possible to work on SECME engineering and VEX robotics projects. Our school is a Title I school with a fairly small enrollment of 450 and therefore it has a relatively small budget. In spite of that, our teachers are very engaged with the success of our students and the parents are very attentive to the achievement and conduct of our students. Our students wear a suit and tie every day and must be fully dressed from the beginning of the day to the end of the day.
My Project
The laptops will be use in the classroom help our boys learn and implement the the robotics language called RobotC. We use it in the classroom to complete assignments and also use it during various robotics competitions at locations all across our city, state and also across the nation. RobotC is a version of the C programming language and our students use it to program robots to compete in VEX robotics competitions.
Last year, we started teaching RobotC with our 8th graders. With the addition of these laptops, we plan to start teaching RobotC in our 6th grade classrooms. They will apply RobotC starting with Lego Mindstorms. Last year, we took the skills we learned in the classroom and went on to win a regional robotics competition in Houston, a TSA state competition in Waco and two national robotics competitions (a SECME VEX national competition at the University of Alabama in Birmingham and a TSA VEX national competition in Washington, DC).
Computer programming is one of the skills that will give our boys a chance at success in the highly technical 21st Century work environment.
As computer programmers, they will have a chance at success in college and in the world of work. Many of our boys have never even been out of town or on an airplane. Their achievement in the classroom transfers to success in engineering and robotics competitions and opens them to an entirely new world of opportunities.
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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 Mr. Hamilton and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
