West Alabama Christian enjoys strong robotics showing

Theirs was the youngest team to compete and probably was among the most proud for what they accomplished.

Thirteen students from West Alabama Christian School, from fifth through seventh grades, built their first robot in December and walked away with three awards at the Shelton State area competition in December.

Led by teachers Lauren Pezent and Marissa Peleaz, the team didn’t have any idea at the beginning how to proceed in building a robot, marketing it, writing an engineering journal or any of the other skills that the competition required.

By the end of the intensive six weeks of preparation, teachers, students, mentors and parents learned a lot and plan to show what they’ve learned at the 2014 competition.

The idea of taking part in the competition began when Pezent and Peleaz attended the Alabama Christian Education Association conference last summer and heard a presentation from Nellie Christian of Shelton State.

Christian introduced the idea of the Boosting Engineering Science and Technology (BEST) competition to the teachers.

“What drew us is that it would improve students’ critical thinking skills,” said Pezent. The two teachers had been looking for ways to encourage their pupils to become better problem solvers and “think outside the box.”

When teachers and students picked up their supplies on the day the teams learned what the challenge was to be, they soon realized, “We were all in over our heads.”

“I felt we were more overwhelmed,” said Pezent. The students, on the other hand were excited. They looked in the box of supplies and asked, “What do we do with this?”

Still, they procrastinated because they felt lost by the challenge they faced. Relying on four mentors who worked with the students at every session, the group began the daunting task of learning from scratch the skills they needed.

“All (the students) wanted to be in the tinkering group,” said Peleaz, but the older students were selected to be the ones to build the robot. Others were chosen for their writing or speaking ability or for other skills needed for different tasks.

Most of the work was done after school. The biggest challenge, said Pezent, was focusing on the task since the work was so new to all of them.

But the teachers were most proud because the students never gave up. The learned to work as a team.

Their hard work paid off. The school brought home three awards from the Shelton State competition: second place in Best Marketing Presentation and two third places for Teamwork and SolidWorks CAD Design.

“Everyone was astounded,” said Pezent. “I wish you could have seen their faces,” added Peleaz.

Tiffany McInnis, a fifth grader, was president of the Marketing Team which came up with a design for their booth. Using the theme “Out with the Old and In with the New,” the team draped a shower curtain as a backdrop, and the school’s lion mascot offered candy to visitors along with the school’s brochures.

Blair Gibbs, also in fifth grade, created the PowerPoint presentation shown in the booth. He had never done one and got a crash course in the program.

Jay Patrick, seventh grade, was one of those who built the robot. While the machine didn’t complete the tasks required by the competition, the team was pleased that the arm actually moved.

Paul Frankowski, a sixth grader, did the entire engineering notebook himself, completing it in one week.

All of them look forward to the competition this fall and would like to continue in the same jobs they were assigned for their first robot.

Taking part in the BEST competition, said Tiffany, requires teamwork. And patience, Blair added.

“It requires to have faith in God and in yourselves to get the job done,” said Jay.