Believe it or not, Unis Middle School won 5th place and 4th pick for the semifinals. With dedicated students and an amazing coach, our first robotic team in Dearborn Public Schools doesn’t deserve anything less.
Building Robots might seem like all fun and games, but it can help the students in multiple ways. “It’s giving them (students) an opportunity to learn how to problem solve, how to design, and how to build using various materials.” the coach, Mrs. Simmons, stated.
You work hard to play hard, and that’s exactly what the robotic team did. “We typically come up with the designs for our robotic arms and attachments and sometimes they don’t work so we have to redesign or put the parts together back together if we have to.” chuckled Mrs. Simmons.
Nisreen Abdulameer, a seventh grader, shares some of the struggles that she had to go through while building the robot. “The robot was programmed through a Motorola phone so it was hard to get the phone to work with the robot.”
“Sometimes, we thought that we might never get the programming done in time” Ahmad Mansour said. Overall, many of them agree that the most challenging thing was having to rebuild over again because something didn’t work out.
Mrs. Simmons had observed that they were competing against many more people than what you would expect. “We were competing against people in southeast Michigan, maybe even more that that.” There was also a lot of diversity from each individual team. “Some were rookie teams, some were teams that had been competing for many years but the good thing about is all the teams work together” The expectations for the teams is to help each other which is called “Gracious Professionalism”.
“The people we were competing against were definitely nice.” agreed Adan Newman, and eighth grader.
Unis Middle School can’t take all the credit though. “We know all our success is due to our allies which were other teams that we competed with.” Mrs. Simmons had shouted out, being sure to let our students know that competition doesn’t have to mean enemies.
Mrs. Simmons also informed me about the longterm benefits of continuing robotics. If they, the robotics students, continue on in robotics in high school, they will be eligible for millions of dollars in scholarships. A lot of generous donors are giving students college money for beginning careers or being educated in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers.”
If you’re still interested in joining, Mrs. Simmons in taking applications all year long. Just go on https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/simmonk/. You need both good grades and good behavior. They still continue to meet twice a month. “It was really cool to put and assess the wires into place. Building things is really fun if you like hands on activities is really fun if you like hands on activities.” Said Fatema Dabaja.
Zainab Alnajim
Middle School Journalist
I am in the robotics team and I would like to say that sometimes we have difficulties with the coding and building the robot, but at the same time we are having work done and having lots of fun.
-Waseem Abdelrahman 1st hour
What are the benefits of joining robotics? What are the competitions like? Tell us more!
In my opinion, building a robot can be difficult but being in the robotics team can be really fun. For example, getting to compete against different people and winning amazing awards. Another benefit is that if students stay in the robotics team, they could get millions of dollars in scholarships. Plus one thing that I think is helpful is that students can learn how to solve problems and design things like said in the essay. Joining the robotics team seems like a lot of fun, but it is also a lot of hard work.
Mohammed Rahal-1st Hour
I am also in the robotics team and the hardest part was the programming we had 2 months of code written down and we were having so much trouble with the Motorola phones we finished the programming and we didn’t know how to work the phones at the end the engineers were waiting for the programmers who are Ahmad Mansour, Waseem Abdelrahman and me. The competition was in a large school and we had booths setup but at the front there was the field where we had to compete and we were allies with very good teams but at the end we took 2 teams with us to the semi-finals and they weren’t great but they showed Gracious Professionalism to us and they also gave us a trophy.
Salem Salem 1st hour
I am in the robotics team and its awesome! As the passage said, I learned STEM and other things! I also learned gracious professionalism (being competitive and nice at the same time). I agree with the story that the most useful thing we learned is Teamwork! What was most difficult other then having to redo everything when something was wrong was that sometimes people wouldn’t show up. I agree with the passage we needed our teammates at the competition or else we could’ve lost. To be generous in the semi-finals we picked a rookie team, and a team that was nice enough to give us a reward!
In the robotics team are very good at coding and building robots. It sounds fun and very difficult to do.
Congratulations to the robotics team keep up the good work Nasser Ahmed 1st hour
I think building a robot can be difficult but being in the robotics team can be really fun. For example, getting to compete against different people and in this case winning. Another benefit is that if students stay in the robotics team, they may be able to no more than others and become academically stronger. Plus one thing that I think is helpful is that students can learn how to solve problems and design things like Zeinab said in the essay. I love how you stated that they won and how they have to use the Motorola phones which was good detail.
Ali Ghoul 3rd hour