Summary:
During the summer of 2014, the Orlando After-School All-Stars (ASAS) Carver Middle School robotics team competed in the NASA/MIT Zero Robotics National Competition. The competition brings together over 40 schools from 9 states. Student teams write and design computer codes that control small satellites that compete against each other in various challenges. The teams battle it out in a "virtual" arena created by MIT to determine regional winners. Regional winners then move on to compete at Kennedy Space Center in the finals. The students' codes are uploaded to actual satellites aboard the International Space Station and two astronauts run the finals on a live feed to Mission Control with all the students watching.
The Orlando ASAS Carver Middle School robotics team won 1st place in the Florida region. They went undefeated and beat more than a dozen teams from six Florida school districts. The team advanced all the way to the International Space Station Finals, where they were edged out by just two points by the eventual national winner.
What makes this an especially great accomplishment is that Carver Middle School was the only Title-I school competing in the national competition and our team had the highest percentage of free/reduced lunch (100%), minority (100%) and female (53%) students participating among all squads in the country. This past year only 15% of Carver M.S. students passed the state standardized testing in Science and only 24% passed in math. This was also the first STEM competition-level squad in the history of the school. In addition, the vast majority of the other schools/teams competing were either from science charters or private academies.
The ASAS Carver team was coached by AmeriCorps member Shauna Tulloch from the Families, Parks and Recreation Department's OPASS program. Ms. Tulloch took a year off from Brown University where she is a Neuroscience major to join AmeriCorps. She spent the school year tutoring and mentoring this group of students in science and math. She also taught a computer coding class in the ASAS after school program which led to the creation of the robotics team. In addition to competing, all 15 students from the team dramatically increased their math and science grades during the school year and met all OCPS attendance and behavior requirements. The team also had perfect attendance during the summer program.
Mayor Dyer will call upon Tyler Chandler, ASAS Executive Director, who will come to the podium. Mr. Chandler will speak about the program and invite members of the Carver Middle School robotics team, as well as the school's principal, to the front of the room. They will be joined by Mayor Dyer, District 6 Commissioner Samuel B. Ings, and FPR Director Lisa Early, where photographs will be taken. |