PITTSBURGH — Anna Blake held tight to a controller, using the buttons to guide a small, gray robot carrying a bright green ball across a field, tension building as she and her partner tried to score as many points as possible within their one-minute timeframe.

One person tried to shoot the ball into a goal wall. Other times, they attempted to pass the ball between their robots, a task they successfully completed once.

The two were among nearly 15 teachers from districts across the region who filed into a Woodland Hills High School classroom on a recent Wednesday, eager to get their first look at the new unified robotics program. The program, a collaboration among nine area districts, aims to make robotics more inclusive by creating teams that integrate neurotypical and neurodiverse students who will work together with the goal of winning a December competition.

“I find that kids sort of come alive when given different avenues to learn,” Blake, an elementary STEAM teacher in the Elizabeth Forward School District, said of the program.

The idea for the unified robotics program was first presented by Andrew Fee, vice president for strategic partnerships at Special Olympics Pennsylvania, after he saw similar programs taking place in other states.

He also realized that Western Pennsylvania “is very sports dominated.” But, Fee said, “we’re always leaving people out when we just think about sports. So looked at it as another way where we could engage a group of students to come together with and without disabilities to spread the mission of inclusion.”

After coming up with the idea, he presented it to VEX Robotics, an organization that creates educational robotics for K-12 students, which then took it to Woodland Hills, a district with various robotics clubs and STEM curricula.

From there it has grown to include Beaver Area, Blackhawk, Hopewell, and Western Beaver in Beaver County; Elizabeth Forward, South Fayette, West Allegheny and Woodland Hills in Allegheny County; and Mars Area in Butler.

The goal now, Fee said, is to create a new mindset of abilities versus disabilities.

“Oftentimes what we’ve heard from colleagues is the participants with disabilities are often teaching the participants without how to do things,” Fee said, noting that Special Olympics is affiliated with the program. “And I think that’s what we’re trying to spotlight: all abilities.”

Now, local students will soon have an opportunity to experience the program, which officially kicked off in September during the professional development session.

There, teachers and staff who will run the program at their districts learned about robotics competitions and how they can be used to build relationships and to teach kids different STEM skills. They also learned about how coding will be used to prepare for the competition, and received a hands-on look at the Rapid Relay game students will play during the final event.

Teachers will now go back to their districts and create middle and high school teams, half of which will be made up of neurodiverse students. The other half will be neurotypical students.

Each team will then work together to build a robot and code it to complete tasks. Teams will spend the rest of their time practicing the Rapid Relay game, which will be played at the Dec. 13 competition at Woodland Hills High School. Through Rapid Relay, students from two different districts will be paired up and will have to work together to score points by passing two balls between two robots, clearing switches covering targets and scoring the ball through the targets.

“It works a lot on cooperation and problem solving, and these kids, you’re being paired up with a team from another school district that you have never met, and then you have to get together and sort of strategize and figure out how you’re going to get the most points,” Tina Dietrich, the director of STEAM and Innovation at Woodland Hills, said.

Through that, Dietrich said, students build on soft skills such as communication and teamwork, an idea that’s especially important for life skills students and those with autism who “really struggle” to develop those skills.

“I think it’s real important that we provide that for them,” Dietrich said. “Making them feel part of a team and working together is real important. And especially just empowering them. This is for fun.”

Kathryn Morrow, a sixth grade learning support teacher and the K-12 gifted coordinator at Western Beaver County School District, agreed, adding that the robotics competition will give kids a hands-on opportunity they wouldn’t otherwise have.

“We have a lot of kids that are shy that love to do hands-on things but we don’t have it,” Morrow said. “We have bocce for kids but we don’t have hands-on computer science, techy stuff that they could get into or that they don’t know that they’re interested in. And then they can collaborate with (regular education) kids and it kind of builds a different bond between them of something game-ish that they might both be into.”

The idea for the team at Western Beaver came from the school’s special education director who asked Morrow if she would be interested in starting a team. Morrow then went to Dawn Schwarz, the high school math and technology teacher, who decided to use students in her classes to create part of the team.

And so far, those students have welcomed the idea.

“They’re pumped,” Schwarz said. “They’re excited to do this and more excited when we bring the special ed kids in and they get to be the mentors and help everyone work together.”

At South Fayette, Lauren Beck, a sixth and eighth grade math teacher who previously taught STEAM and coding, and who was tasked with heading the district’s team, added, “It’s a great opportunity for the school, the students there and I think they’re going to love it.”

And while the program is just getting started, officials are already looking to the future.

Dietrich is hopeful that districts will have more than just one or two teams this year but “we’ll see how far we get with that.” And after this year, she wants to “make this as big as possible.”

But for now, officials are focused on creating inclusivity among the participating districts.

“It’s OK to be different,” Blake of Elizabeth Forward said. “But it’s also great to share and collaborate together with all of our differences.”

© 2024 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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