This weekend my wife and I were judges in the Washington State First Lego League robotics competition. It is a team oriented event that has kids within a similar age range (3rd to 8th grade seemed to be the range for this event) grouped together to build a Lego robot that performs missions inspired by a theme. At least that's what it looks like on the surface.

    I found it to be far more than a simple competition. Groups of kids from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and religions are working together to accomplish a goal. They are taught that winning is great but how you win, how you lose, and how you interact with people is far more important than taking a trophy home. They are encouraged to participate in their communities and share these same values with their peers as well as adults. They are also encouraged to learn more about the sciences and engineering, how to manage time, think for the future, and problem solve. There are also robots!

    This theme for this event was food safety. The teams had to understand food safety from a foundational level, not just have robot A perform task B. As a result many of the kids had been to various companies that produce food to learn how it is done and why. They build projects and presentations that are given to the judges, and then they do a mini interview with the core values judges (yes this league has core values) as well as an exercise. I was impressed with the level of maturity that these kids displayed as well as their depth of knowledge, and their enthusiasm was great to see. Oh yeah, did I mention that there are also robots?

    I heard a lot of children talking how they could use what they've learned to help people, or give them a job opportunity when they're older. Keep in mind these kids are generally between 3rd and 8th grade. I remember that age and my thought seldom went to what I was going to do for a living; so it was really cool to see some of these boys and girls looking at their futures in a realistic practical way. Yes I said girls. I thought this was going to be totally gender biased it wasn't and that surpised me. There were tons of girls there, and even a few teams with more girls than boys including one team of all girls. Not once did I hear any of the boys deride a girl because she was a girl making robots. Of course there were the kids who were more A-type than others but that seemed to be spread liberally through the girls as well as the boys. It was somewhat chaotic as all things with young kids can be but everyone seemed to get along no matter who they were.

    All in all the event was very cool and amazing to see. If you have some spare time to donate you should consider helping these great people out. I'm sure they will take money too, or you could help put a team together. Either way it won't be a waste of resources for you, or time. If you have kids this is a great way to introduce them to teamwork that isn't just about winning but winning well, and winning right.

 
    FLL, thanks for having us this weekend. My wife and I really appreciated the opportunity and hope to participate at the next event.