Robotics and science classes sharpen problem-solving skills

The Harvey robotics team positions their robots for competition. Fox Lane’s Isabella Tanzi collecting water samples at Mianus River as part of her science research project. John Jay students with the robot they built for competition. Matt Casavant of John Jay with his Grand Finalist trophy. CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS

By PAUL WIEMAN

STEM education is entering its third decade of science education in the U.S. It brings together the academic disciplines of science, technology, engineering and math integrated in a manner that helps students understand the academic content at hand while beginning to think and act like scientists, engineers, programmers and problem solvers.

STEM is at the core of two programs, science research and robotics, at John Jay, Fox Lane and Byram Hills high schools and the Harvey School.

Robotics is a high school elective course, which over the course of the year challenges students to design a robot to perform a particular set of tasks that has been established by a ruling body. Recent examples include stacking cones at a certain place on a grid or hanging items on a rod. Students, working within a specific set of guidelines and rules, build and program the robot, and then compete at tournaments against other schools in the different leagues.

The Harvey School has a long record of award-winning achievements in the Vex Robotics League and has served as mentor to other area schools as they have initiated and developed their own programs. Science teacher Chris Kelly started the program in 2014 at the request of Upper School Principal Phil Lazarro, and it has been a success since its very beginning. 

“To be clear,” Kelly said, “it is not about just winning the competition, but we have received over 130 awards in our decade of participation in the Vex Robotics League. But so many of the awards are for our engineering writings and our innovative designs, and those, to me, are just as exciting because they award the process and not just the results.”

Peter Lichten at Byram Hills leaned heavily on the Harvey School as a mentor at the start of their robotics program and reflects on how the robotics course offers a more integrated approach to learning consistent with the main principles of STEM education. “This way of learning, kids are just doing science — it’s as simple as that. Through trial and error, they gather data, analyze it, and it’s all an organic process” 

Over the past few years, John Jay High School has had success in a different league, the First Tech Challenge. This year, the MOB team advanced beyond the local competitions, competed at the state level and now has earned a spot in the world competitions in Houston. According to Jonathan Peter, who teaches robotics at John Jay, “Something that is exciting about the program is that it’s a spot where kids make mistakes every day in every possible way and learn from them, improve on them and get better. It is one of the rare places in high school where we focus on iteration and reflection and starting again. It’s a great way to learn.”

John Jay takes the robotics course one step further. “In fact,” noted Peter, “the course is called Entrepreneurship in Robotics, and it is centering the robot as something we promote and upon which we build a brand.” While some students are busy designing, building and programming the robot itself, others are designing a label, making T-shirts, creating social media accounts and more. The result is a confluence of talent centered on a robotic competition that is a source of energy, creativity and learning.

Over the past decade, robotics has grown into an exciting part of area high schools’ curriculum. Full-time faculty staff the programs, space is dedicated to its success and annual budgets pay for the hardware, software, tournament fees and more. All of this gives students an opportunity to learn in the practices established and promoted by the STEM education principles.

Three years of research

While robotics depends on the collective energy of students working together to compete against other schools over one or more semesters, science research classes rely on the focus and dedication of individual students working for three years to produce a scientific presentation about a topic of their own choosing. Entering the program their sophomore year, students spend the better part of the first year familiarizing themselves with professional scientific journals and work toward articulating a scientific project of their own interest. The next step is to find a mentor, usually a professional scientist who will serve as a guide for the project. Older students in the science research class will usually work with the sophomores on this process, offering them guidance, encouragement and support as they email scientists or professors who may serve as mentors. 

After a mentor is lined up, for most projects during the second year the student designs the scientific study with input and oversight from the mentor and the teacher and begins refining the project and collecting the data. Once the data is collected, then statistical analysis is applied and the results begin to take shape. Finally, in the third year, a scientific presentation is prepared, a poster illustrating the process, the findings and the results is created, and after much back and forth and feedback from fellow students and teachers, the student is ready to attend the local science fair and present the findings. 

Of all the area high schools, Byram Hills has been offering science research the longest.

“We are celebrating our 36th year,” said director Stephanie Greenwald, who has been connected to the program for 18 years. The program “was started by Dr. (Robert) Pavlica, who believed in it and was able to get the support and funding from the administration. In fact, the curriculum he developed is the curriculum most schools follow for their students.” This year, she noted, the high school has 114 students enrolled, with two fulltime and two part-time faculty supporting them, and classroom space and a budget dedicated for science research. Among the projects Greenwald cited: shock absorbing tennis rackets to reduce tennis elbow and inventing a spoon for people with cerebral palsy. 

“We are building tinkerers and engineers through this program,” she said.

At Fox Lane High School, science research is linked to SUNY Albany, and students can receive college credit for their work. 

“This is not a typical high school class,” Fox Lane’s Amy Pirro explained. “There tends not to be direct instruction or collective group learning. Instead, we lean into four core principles or traits of a scientist: resourcefulness, communication, perseverance and enthusiasm.”

Science and Engineering Fair honors

This year, John Jay High School sent nine students to the prestigious Regeneron Westchester Science and Engineering Fair and walked away with several awards. Among the winners was Matthew Casavant, who created what he described as “the first personalized virtual reality nature software.”

His creation garnered a first-place finish in the Behavioral Science category as well as a Grand Finalist award. This placed him in the top 20 of the over 800 student presenters at the fair and advanced him to the International Science and Engineering Fair in May. 

Reflecting on his experience, Matt said, “taking John Jay’s science research has taught me countless skills and life lessons, however, most importantly it’s taught me the art of questioning.” He added, “Science research has also taught me how to efficiently communicate my ideas.”

Senior Valedictorian Dakota Cameron is another John Jay student who presented her research at the WESEF. Noting the large carbon footprint of making concrete, she explored whether the excess waste of fast fashion and the petrochemicals involved in many of the clothing materials, might be somehow added to concrete. In this way, the carbon footprint might be lowered, the waste of fast fashion might be absorbed and concrete might be strengthened. Her research landed her a third-place prize in the Environmental Science category and more than a few blocks of concrete in her backyard. 

Cameron also mentioned how the science research course has taught her the importance of communication skills.

“From emailing to finding a mentor, communicating regularly and clearly with my mentor, presenting and public speaking skills, all were improved as a result of this class. Also, I learned that depth of knowledge adds confidence to the art of communication,” Cameron said.

A third John Jay senior, Aminata Gueye, collected air samples at the school grounds and compared her results to the published air quality readings for the town. She learned that, in fact, the area around the school had a different air quality than the town in general. For this work, and her analysis of the data, she received the NASA Earth Systems Science Award. 

Aminata said that her work in the class confirmed her hope to become a pediatric pulmonologist.

“I learned the importance of data collection and statistical analysis, which was part of the science, but I also learned the importance of demonstrating enthusiasm, how to work with professionals and how to maintain relationships over time,” she said. 

Krista Munger and Lisa Papernik are the Science Research teachers at John Jay High School. “Students need tenacity and resilience in this three-year process, and we are here to help them,” Munger said.

“In most science classes, labs are designed to work, but in science research, there is a lot of pivoting and trying again, trying something different. Steps along the way may require a restart after some problem-solving,” Papernik added.

In science research, students must use the skills of engineers to design and alter their own experiments to find the data they seek. Then, they use technology skills in their data collection and organization, and finally they apply statistical analysis to their results. As Greenwald remarked, “Our students have learned a lot about how to use science in ways they never knew.” 

Robotics and science research students must coordinate and integrate the many different disciplines of the STEM curriculum. Whether they are part of a robotics team or working independently on their third year of a sophisticated science project, they are actively engaged in their own learning, asking the right questions and seeking the best answers. 

As Lichten noted about his developing the robotics class at Byram Hills: “If you just give the students time and space and materials, it turns out to be a lot like play, and it is amazing how fast the learning comes. Such play leads to longer lasting learning.” 

This article is part of a continuing series exploring how local schools are addressing the teaching of science and its related fields — technology, engineering, and mathematics — collectively referred to as STEM. This independently-reported series in The Recorder is made possible by a grant from Regeneron.