|
Team 6947 Savage Tumaz was the first team in Taiwan to receive the honor in becoming FIRST Ladies official partner in 2019. Before entering FIRST, I’ve always been concerned about people’s expectations for females in the STEM field. However, my experiences, being part of the FIRST community, assured me that I no longer had to be worried about other people’s opinions towards female FRC participants like me. At the beginning, being overlooked or looked down at was inevitable, but people in FIRST love providing opportunities for everyone to enjoy their time participating in FRC. Gaps between female members and the rest of the team and the community starts to narrow as members start to familiarize with each other, understand each other’s passion for STEM, and contribute to making our team better as a whole. Especially when everyone is devoted to a new project, your ethnicity, race, and age no longer matter. We spend time together on the same project, believe in each other’s abilities, and consider everyone’s thoughts in order for us to reach our common goal. As a female freshman in FIRST, I’ve been able to work with my team and enjoy my time during club classes, building season, as well as competitions. The FIRST community helps us to go beyond our expectations for ourselves. It provides us with more opportunities to increase our confidence as we build trust in each other’s capabilities. During my first year of being a member of team 6947 Savage Tumaz as both a freshman and a female member, I was surprised by the fact that my team believed in me more than I did: I received a major role in our business team and joined the drive team as the operator of the robot. These experiences were brand new for me, and I really appreciate how my team saw so much potential in me. I’m glad I made the choice to become part of FIRST. Last December, our team held our first FIRST Ladies seminar. We invited Demei Lee, a distinguished female robotics professor, to be our guest speaker. Professor Lee shared with us her experience in the STEM field and the challenges that female students interested in STEM may face. We then spent time to exchange thoughts with many female leaders from different FRC teams, including many teams which have just started their teams this year. The increase of female involvement in FIRST, evident from the amount of female participants in our seminar, has given me more opportunities to learn from great minds and more confidence that females have the potential to be just as competent as males or even surpass them in STEM fields.  This blog was written by Serena C. from FRC 6947 Savage Tumaz. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!
0 Comments
The slogan, “FIRST is more than robots” sounds false to first-year teams. However, upon reflection of all that I have accomplished during the last six years, I have come to realize that this slogan is more than true. Through participation in FIRST programs, I have acquired skills other than building robots, that will impact me for the rest of my life. The biggest way that FIRST has improved my life is through public speaking. At a FIRST competition, you have to be outgoing and talkative to do well. This has led me to improve my public speaking and my ability to talk to people in general. After talking to some members of the Flourish & Bots project, I realized that FIRST has impacted people in different ways. I talked to Aditi N. on Flourish & Bots FTC 12863 to get her input on this topic. Aditi has been involved with FIRST for six years and has been on Flourish & Bots teams for five years. Aditi has been able to communicate with her peers more and has ‘come out of her shell’ after being involved with FIRST. She has also learned a lot of skills that she would not have learned anywhere else, such as soldering and learning how to build different types of mechanisms on the robot. With all this knowledge she has acquired, Aditi wants to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering. FIRST has impacted Aditi’s life and will continue to impact her life in the future. I also asked a younger girl how FIRST has impacted her life so far. This girl is Brie H. on Flourish & Bots FLL 2838. Brie is a second-year member of Flourish & Bots and this is also her second year in FIRST. During these two years, Brie has seen a significant change in how she interacts with others. Being on a team of 10 girls can be difficult at times but Brie managed to compromise with them and learn how to work well with her peers. This has translated to how Brie works with her peers at school, on sports teams, and at clubs. Brie has also noticed that she is a more confident young woman now than she was prior to being involved in FIRST. Overall, because of her time in FLL, Brie has developed valuable leadership and teamwork skills that she would not have acquired if it was not for FIRST. The last girl I talked to is one who has been on the Flourish & Bots teams for 4 years. She is Emily R. on Flourish & Bots FLL 38323. Emily is a fourth-year member of the Flourish & Bots project. Through her involvement in FIRST she has met a lot of new people and made new connections with girls from different schools. Her communication skills have also greatly improved and she is able to voice her opinion more often after being involved with FIRST. No matter how, FIRST has impacted every person that has been through one of its programs. This may be improved confidence, new connections made, or learning about different career paths. No matter what the impact is on a person, FIRST will always affect someone’s life. This blog was written by FTC 12863 Flourish and Bots. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule!
Last spring my team, Nighthawk Robotics 11943, organised what we termed a Women and Gender Minorities in FTC event. As students at an all-girls school we had a unique perspective upon arriving to FTC. Our team is made up of students who were all assigned female at birth and, as we competed, we realized that our team was always “the girls team” or “that girls school”. We found ourselves resenting being called “ladies” at competitions and how officials use of the term carried over into other teams language and behaviour toward us. When we went to FIRST Splash (an event hosted by NYC FIRST that consists of FTC workshops) at the beginning of the season, we were able to unload our frustrations around being at a girls school and pursuing STEM. We found ourselves searching for other faces at competitions and wishing that we could have a space to talk about our experiences, were we the only ones affected? By that spring, we organised and hosted our first Gender Minorities in FTC event. It was billed as a night of conversation and dinner with a keynote speaker. We worked closely with building staff to find a date, secure space, and have the ability to feed our guests. Independently of this we tried to create fun FTC/STEM related activities as icebreakers for our event, eventually landing on FTC themed Pictionary. Our members used our usual work time to draft schedules for the event, order catering, and contact gender minorities on other teams. When the day finally arrived, we had a greater than expected turnout with over thirty attendees. Our keynote speaker was our coach, Mr Watson’s, professor for his graduate program, Dr Sandra Okita. Dr Okita brought with her several of her female engineering graduate students and they talked about their journey as women in STEM and how they got into the field. Afterwards, we ate dinner (pizza and salad) while introducing ourselves and playing FTC-themed Pictionary. After dinner we cut our cake, frosted with the phrase “Graciously Professional STEMinists”, and started our discussion. We soon realized that our discussion questions weren’t working well and decided to operate a more free form discussion. One attendee spoke about how although she was captain other teams would approach one of her male teammates for questions related to the robot even after she identified herself at the team captain.Others spoke about how people assumed that they worked on the business end of the team as opposed to the programming and engineering side. All in all, we view the event as a resounding success for the first time. As we look to hold our second event, renamed “Gender Minorities in FTC” to be more trans-inclusive, we are re-examining our previous one. The main changes we made are to the name and the time allotted to our keynote. We felt that last year our speakers took up too much of the time and, to stay on schedule, we had to condense other parts of our event. A few of our team members, who do not identify as female, felt a little alienated by the name. We also realized that our name might exclude those who identify as trans masculine and, as they are also gender minorities, we wanted to be explicit about their inclusion. All of these changes are being incorporated to create a less formal atmosphere and a more free flowing discussion. As we continue competing and collecting emails of those who are interested, we are constantly keeping an eye on how to improve our event from last year. See you in the spring! This blog was written by Erica J from FTC 11943 Nighthawk Robotics. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule! At the Arconic Learning Center on a Sunday morning, you can find 8 girls building and programming a robot in one room, another 10 girls building and programming a different robot, 10 girls working on business management, 12 girls building a lego model, and 2-3 girls coaching them all. This is the Flourish & Bots project. This group is comprised of one FTC team, two FLL teams, and three FLL Jr. teams. You may be asking yourself- “how did this come to be?”- to answer this, we have to go back to 2015. This was a magical year, the year when Flourish & Bots was first formed. Their coach, Theresa Barber, saw an influx of girls interested in robotics from the years 2013-2014. She coached the FLL teams at a local elementary school and during these years, had 11 girls on 2 different teams. Once these teams’ seasons ended, Barber chose to create a super team with these girls (one of them moved so there were the maximum 10 girls on the team). Thus Flourish & Bots was born. This team competed in FLL for 2 years before outgrowing the program and moving onto FTC. When we moved onto FTC, we decided to start an FLL team and two FLL Jr. teams as part of our outreach for FTC. Also, to share our knowledge of FIRST and FLL with younger girls. Going into our second season of FTC, we decided to add another FLL team and another FLL Jr. team to our program to accommodate all of the girls that wanted to be involved in this program. This leads us to what the Flourish & Bots project looks like today. So far, over 50 girls have been impacted by this program and this number will continue to grow. This all started when 10 girls wanted to be on another FIRST team after competing in FLL for one year. The Flourish & Bots Project lets girls work together to accomplish tasks that most girls don’t get to do on a co-ed team. This program empowers girls and shows them that they have the magic within them to do anything.  Flourish & Bots: FTC 12863, FLL 2838, FLL 38323
This blog was written by FTC 12863 Flourish and Bots. If you are interested in blogging for FIRST Ladies, click here to sign up on the schedule! |
Archives
August 2024
|
RSS Feed
