Lisa Weise is a biology teacher and robotics coach at Holt Public Schools. For our teacher appreciation issue of InspirED Michigan, we asked her to share with us a first-hand perspective of what motivates her to go above and beyond for her students.

This fall, at a training for teachers led by a robotics instructor and some high school students, I messed up. The part my fingers fumbled with had taken me what seemed like at least an hour to fasten together, wires crisscrossing over and under each other inside a tiny box. I realized I had switched a couple wires. Looking at them in dismay, I contemplated possible ways to undo them without undoing everything. At this point one of the high school helpers said, “It’s okay to mess up. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn.”  
 
At that moment I knew this robotics thing is good for kids.
 
With confidence and a cheerful smile, our mentor student helped us undo and redo our wiring until it worked.  She’d seen this before. Slowly, patiently we kept on working until the motors whirred when we expected them to whirr, and in the correct direction. What a great feeling – having the motors go the way we wanted them to go!
 
I wanted my own students to have the feeling I had that day: the hard work, the frustration, the persistence and the success after failure.  The “I did it, I get it!” look on a student's face is what we all strive for as teachers.
 
I was hooked on the idea of robotics and high school kids, but short on time. I’m a biology teacher, not an engineering major!
 
A month or so passed before I got an email from FIRST Robotics, an organization dedicated to inspiring young people to be leaders in science and technology by engaging them in exciting, mentor-based programs. The email suggested teachers investigate a state grant to get more schools building and competing with robots. At the time I ignored the email but kept thinking about the kid saying, “it’s okay to mess up,” and that feeling of persistence paying off. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to offer our students a challenge – something that seemed impossible made possible. 
 
I had heard the mantra from FIRST, “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.” I didn’t really believe that mantra until I saw FIRST’s competitive game. I opened the kit of parts and expected to see an erector set of sorts, or perhaps a large Lego-like kit to construct with lots of options. I expected a choose-your-own-adventure robot where the students make some decisions, but ultimately follow a prescribed set of directions.
 
I learned quickly that is not how a FIRST Robotics competition works. The kit of parts contained a pile of metal bars, wires, bearings, a chassis, motors and, to be honest, a bunch of stuff I had no idea how to use. It looked like we were going to build a small car.
 
The program is designed to take students through all of the parts of engineering without the instructions that inhibit creativity. And while instructions would have been nice at times, the frustration led to a different kind of eureka.
 
Thankfully, the community of FIRST knows that the task is daunting for a rookie team and there are lots of support in place.  Other coaches answered phone calls, invited us to practice, stopped by our practice and responded quickly to all of my questions. The program also connects teams to mentors from the community. Without that expertise, our pile of metal, wires and motors would still be in the shop as an unassembled dream.
 
Still, even with the expertise of our mentors and the support of other coaches, I often felt lost and wondered if we would ever get the robot to function.
 
I have to admit I really did want to quit around the time I figured out we had put the pneumatic wheels together incorrectly for about the fifth time. But I didn’t quit. We didn’t quit. The 18 students, their parents and the mentors stuck with it until our robot, named the roboram, worked.  And when it did work, there it was, that feeling of, “I did it!” that only comes after the seemingly impossible becomes possible.
 
One unique aspect of the robotics competition compared to other sports or competitive endeavors is a thing called “coopertition,” merging cooperation and competition. FIRST prides itself on forming teams that build each other up. At both of our district competitions, multiple teams had their students, mentors and coaches helping us fix problems we encountered throughout the day.
 
The competition matches you up with a different trio of schools, called an alliance, for each two and a half minute game. This shuffling of partners encourages helping other teams because you never know when another team will be part of your alliance. Throughout the competition, teams offer parts and expertise continually as we go through the cycle of building the robot, breaking the robot, then making the robot better.
 
The setup of the competition day fosters not only the coopertition, but a troubleshooting atmosphere where everyone is in a state of, “How do we make this work better?” And the “we” at a robotics competition includes everyone – all 40 teams.
 
The FIRST Robotics competition taught students how to build a robot that functions more like a small car than what I might have pictured as a robot in the past. The robot is fast, robust and felt a little dangerous in the hallway. We quickly understood the function of the bumpers.
 
While building the robot, the kids were able to fill several niches. Some worked on designing parts of the robot using CAD software, others learned how to drill metal, rivet, solder and connect wires and motor controllers. Some students gravitated towards programming, while others enjoyed taking pictures and blogging about our experiences.

But the best job, once we got rolling, was driving the robot! And when you wait six weeks for something, that first drive down the hallway is the kind of eureka feeling you just can’t get anywhere else.