A few weeks ago I witnessed the first of thousand little cuts in the life of my daughter. Its a pretty common experience. Every woman has a story that she can tell about the little cuts in her life. Maybe men have their own stories, I will let them tell theirs'.
Dad of my daughter's friend called recently. He wanted to consult with my son and my husband about their First Lego League(FLL) experience. He knew my son was in a team for which my husband was the coach, for few years. He wanted to consult because his son was going to be part of a FLL team. We spoke an evening, and I figured out and made arrangements for my son and husband to go to the Dad's home next day.
Every year FLL conducts a competition where teams of elementary and middle school kids : create solutions to that year's challenges by (a) building a robot from lego pieces and motors (b) program the robot to accomplish missions on a mat (c) create a project to solve a problem that they see in the area of their challenge in real world.
My daughter who is 2 years younger than my son had just completed her 3 year stint with her on FLL team. I was the primary coach and my friend GS was the secondary coach for her team. As soon as I got off the phone, and explained everything to my husband and son, my daughter asked "But what about me?". Her questions was why was she not being consulted too. Following my first instinct to protect her, I said that the Dad might have asked for help from her brother because he probably wanted his son to see a role model. And my husband must have got some inkling of her feeling.
The next day all three headed to the Dad's home. When they came back I asked how was the session. My daughter said that she did not get chance to do any FLL talk because the Dad promptly called his daughter - my daughter's friend - for entertaining themselves while the boys consulted. And I saw her shrug it off.
I will not presume to know or guess the methodology of the Dad's technique of consultation. I have known him for several years and he is one of the nicest person. Maybe it was a case of unknown bias that creeps into even the best among us. But in retrospect I can see the great opportunity for learning that has been missed.
My husband was the coach for my son's team, sharing coaching responsibilities with father of my son's very close friend. The team consisted of all boys who were in middle school. The boys could give full expression to their interests and inclinations for the three years they competed as a FLL team.
When the time came, my daughter too wanted to form a team and compete in FLL. When she was in 5th grade I volunteered to be their coach, and my friend and another Mom was the second coach. We competed for 3 years. For the second and third year I recruited my friend and colleague, a fellow software developer, to be the second coach. First year it was a team of 6 girls, second year it was a team of 4 girls. Third year it was a team of 4 girls and 1 boy.
Here I will share my view of my team. The first year the girls came in ready figuratively to jump in the lake and learn swimming as they went along. I had the opportunity to teach the girls how to think like software developers/engineers. Once they got the hang of it they were whipping out code several lines long for each mission. They learned to analyze requirements, the tools that they have and how to solve the problem with them. They learned the art of testing and fixing problems in their missions.
The second year 2 of the girls (siblings) moved to private school and the team chose to continue as 4 members. This time they knew what to expect and in the final week pulled through. They learned the how to divide up the tasks and complete them. They learned from mistakes and meandered towards their goals. My son and his friend (veterans of many FLLs) were their mentors and the girls learned to how to leverage knowledge and experience from the older boys.
At the end of each year the team would go for celebration dinner. At the end of the dinner they were asked, would they want to do it next year. By second year they would holler their yes even before I could complete the question.
Then we moved to third year. In my opinion, third year was significant. This year twin brother of one of the girls joined our team. And this was the year the kids took over their team. From the day one they put to use the experience from last two years. The narrowed down the missions, worked on them. They worked on their robot, and its attachments. They gave each other the space to discuss and try their solutions until they found the one that worked for the mission. In the final week push before the tournament they formed pairs to focus on the missions. They would schedule their time with me so that they could come over after school to work on their missions. Each pair would hand over their progress to the next pair to continue the work. And they would take turns testing and perfecting...all of this with the least amount of intervention from the coaches.
The evening before the tournament, I thought that since everything was under control I could step out for an hour and get some exercise. The moment I stepped into the house my daughter and another team member waylay me at the door. They regaled me how the robot had suddenly stopped working and my heart sank. Then they said...no worries they asked for help from my son and they figured out one of the motors had stopped working. So they took apart the robot, replaced the motor and put everything back again together. And just to make sure everything still works, they ran their missions multiple times and corrected their code to make sure everything ran to perfection. All in the one hour I was gone.
The next day at the tournament, theirs was one of the 3 teams that consistently scored more than 100, and each time they scored more than last run. Between the three runs, they practiced to consistently improve. Before the third run, the same problem as previous day happened, a motor failed. This time they were prepared.....they had come with an additional motor just in case. The again took apart the robot, replaced the motor, reconfigured back the robot and rant the missions multiple times to correct their software. All this under time constraint and they scored their highest for the last run.
They did not get medals, they did not go to next round. They did have lots of fun, they found a way to work as team, they learned to take responsibility, they figured out each person's strengths and maximized its effect, while supporting each other in building in other areas. It gave confidence to my daughter to walk into robotics club in her school and earn respect of older kids in the club. Other girls sometimes when we cross paths they update me on their latest activities/challenges. In each of them I saw the self-awareness, pride and confidence of the work they had achieved and that they are capable of. I see in them that they shed fear to step out of their comfort zone, fail in short term to give themselves a chance to succeed in long term. I see them venturing out to figure out what do they like.