Robotics and Thinking Outside the Box

The School Board met on Monday night for a very long but very informative meeting.  The highlight of the evening was seeing the Cinco Ranch CRyptonite Robotics team and its robot.  It shoots baskets, but does SO much more.  I encourage you to check out the presentation including a video of the robot in action here.  Just click on item IV on the right hand menu.  Frankly, when I heard the challenge was to make a robot that shoots basketballs, I thought it would stand on the free throw line and chunk them up there.  But this robot actually PLAYS basketball-- it scoops up three basketballs and then loads them into a chute, beams a light to the backboard and adjusts trajectory and velocity to shoot the ball from wherever it is with amazing accuracy.  And high school students designed and produced it.  WOW!  The Cinco Ranch Robotics team participates (and excels) in competitions sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).  Check this out. This is a terrific organization whose motto is: Igniting Young Minds. Nurturing Passions. Practicing Gracious Professionalism. 

Professionalism, poise, confidence: the students who spoke at the board meeting certainly exhibited those qualities!  And how exciting for them to be able to report that 100% of the graduating seniors in the club were accepted to colleges where they will enter a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) field.  Kudos!

The club not only impacts its members but the surrounding community, too. The club mentors other clubs at the feeder Jr. Highs, and they appear before sponsors with their requests for funding and to justify costs.  They learn that even in science fields, there is a business side to the endeavor.  This is a very real world experience.  They are anxious to have similar clubs at every high school, and have helped get one started at Morton Ranch.  This is a tough situation, because as a general rule, club formation and participation is not done at the district level, but is driven by student interest and, more importantly, sponsor availability at the campus level.  I wish them well, and hope they will ignite fires all over the district!

They have corporate sponsors who cover costs, but asked the district to provide space for them to use as they build their robots.  I hope the district will "think outside the box" on this one.  I'm reminded of my former school board colleague, Eric Duhon, who always felt the district should utilize the space under the seats at a stadium by building it on top of another building, rather than on top of a big pile of dirt.  He suggested meeting space, offices or even storage-- just so long as it is used the OTHER five days a week. Perhaps providing space for "robot garages" in a centralized area (sort of like an Ag Barn for robots) would be a good use of that space when a new stadium is built?

Kudos to City of Katy for Recycling!

Here's news that will make my friend Karen K very happy-- the City of Katy has started recycling!  I know change is hard, and some of the people in Katy will complain, but recycling is so important.  The more we implement Reduce/Reuse/Recycle, the less our children will have to clean up from landfills in the future.  Kudos!!

I've been a recycler for many years, and feel better about using a product if the container it comes in is recyclable.  In looking up info about recycling, I realized I MUST get with the program as far as using shopping bags, though.  This is from the Clean Air Council:
Every year, Americans use approximately 1 billion shopping bags, creating 300,000 tons of landfill waste.⁶
Plastic bags do not biodegrade. Light breaks them down into smaller and smaller particles that contaminate the soil and water and are expensive and difficult to remove.⁶
Less than 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled each year. Recycling one ton of plastic bags costs $4,000. The recycled product can be sold for $32.⁶
When the small particles from photodegraded plastic bags get into the water, they are ingested by filter feeding marine animals. Biotoxins like PCBs that are in the particles are then passed up the food chain, including up to humans.[7]

While I find the last sentence motivating in a gross-out sort of way, I'm staggered by the cost outlined in the penultimate one.  If it costs $4000 to recycle a ton of bags, but only $32 of that cost can be recouped, a different solution has to be found.  Switching to paper is not the solution; Paper takes more water and energy to produce than plastic and since paper is heaver, the environmental impact is greater to truck paper bags from the manufacturing facility to a warehouse and then to a store.  So, I am going to develop the habit of carrying reusable shopping bags.

I confess, it could be easier:  In Rochester, NY, I visited a Wegman's grocery, and they really have it figured out.  Their bags are a reasonable size (some of the ones I've seen here weigh 25 lbs. when loaded), they have little loops under the handles so they fit on a standard-sized rack that holds them open while being loaded at the store, they have a plastic liner in the bottom so the bag holds its shape even when filled with oddly shaped items, and when I stand up and carry them, the handles are short enough that the bags don't drag on the ground.  Also (and perhaps most importantly), they train their baggers so you don't wind up with one bag full of all the heavy stuff.  

Next thing someone smarter than me needs to figure out is how to get rid of the little plastic bags to collect your apples and hold them as you check out.  When I was a kid, there were paper bags.  That's not a solution, but maybe someone else has modern idea?  

Graduation Perspiration Inspiration

Another round of graduations has come and gone.  I am so proud of all the young men and women who crossed the stage and got their diplomas, and of the parents, grandparents and siblings who supported those students in this achievement.  For some grads, it was a pretty easy trip, with enough money and support for cars, clothes, tutoring, grad parties, etc.  For others, the trip was not so easy.


I heard about a student at Morton Ranch High School who must have had a rough road getting to graduation.  I'm filling in blanks, here, because I only know about his arrival at the graduation ceremony, and am imagining the path that got him there.  I'm told he arrived dripping in sweat, without a dress shirt.  He was at first chastised for not dressing appropriately, but when the circumstances were known, Herff-Jones fashioned a man's "shirt" collar out of a ladies' collar, a staff member lent a tie, and he walked across the stage and got his diploma.  Why did attitudes change?  Because they learned that the young man is homeless, and in order to get to graduation, he JOGGED there.


I'm sad that this student did not have the family support that the vast majority of our students do, but he certainly had the support of someone at Morton Ranch, which I learned a little bit about when I followed up with Mark Grisdale, MRHS Principal.  Apparently, the young man had a falling out of some sort with his family several weeks before the end of school, and felt he had to drop out to work.  Someone helped him see that with so few weeks left, it would be possible to graduate and he'd never have to do it again, if he just worked through the end of school.  It took a lot of cajoling and follow-through, but he made it to enough classes to graduate, and passed them.  He could have so easily fallen through the cracks, but he was "caught" by someone at Morton Ranch.  Another cool side note: Mark didn't know about this and had to track down the story for me, which means he is lets his people handle problems on their own and doesn't feel the need to micromanage. The best leaders hire great people and then get out of their way.  Kudos to him!


I'm THRILLED this student moved a mountain to get to graduation, and am wondering what fabulous Morton Ranch teacher, class, or experience with his peers or campus staff inspired this perseverance?  What inspired this young man to jog for miles in 90+ degree heat to get to the ceremony?  It must have been powerful...  But not surprising.  There are thousands of terrific stories in our schools of someone making a difference in another's life.  It could have been something like the teachers at another High School who worked till the wee hours of the morning with students who barely missed the mark to help them make the KOLA requirements so they could graduate with their peers.  It could have been like the community member who organized a fund-raising campaign to help a group of Miller Career Center students travel to a national competition because he knew they had no "booster club" to help make that happen.  We are so lucky and blessed to live in a community where these types of stories are common.  Sadly, we don't really have a "news source" willing to cover those stories.  The traditional newspapers don't cater to the entire district geographically, and the internet "news" pages are all about generating "hits", so the tear-down stories are preferred over the feel-good.  Closest thing is a Facebook page called "IHeartKISD".  Not enough people know about it, though.


In addition to being proud of the graduates and their families, I'm particularly proud of the people of our school district, and especially those wonderful folks at Morton Ranch who did not let this young person fall through the cracks.  Katy ISD is a terrific school district, where wonderful things are happening, and we need to shout about it more often.  Tell those wonderful stories!  Anywhere and everywhere!