Coopertition

This is the post that I intended for yesterday but had to get past yesterday's events to get back to this place.  

I have been invited to be a judge for a First Lego League Robotic Competition.  On Wednesday night I took part in a teleconference for judge training.  The judge panel for the competition I am judging is made up solely of professional women in the area. Since this competition is sponsored by the Girl Scouts of America, the organizer stated that she wanted the panel to be women in order to inspire girls with breadth of professional women in our community.  I felt honored to be selected for the panel. I am am quite sure I will also be inspired by the opportunity to meet and work with my fellow judges. 

The trainer was excellent and I found myself relishing her phrasing.  I also found myself really looking forward to the event.  Prior to this training, I was a bit concerned because what do I know about robotics?  But she put those fears to rest when she said: There is no expectation that judges will understand every mission.  Have the teams tell you, talk about strategy, how they chose their missions, you will find teams can have chosen their missions very differently. 

In these comments there are several elements that I took away: 1) I don't have to be an expert, I am there to listen to the kids' stories of their experience 2) It is expected that the kids will have arrived at the competition via very different routes and that is OK.  The goals is judge how well they can convey that path. 

The trainer made us comfortable with what to expect by walking us through the day.  The next point that resonated with me was to listen for comments that indicated that the coach had the kids do all the heavy lifting.  This is after all their competition. Although it is would be easy for the coach to do all the work with the kids watching, that isn't the point, the kids need to experience the hurdles and roadblocks on the way to the path of success.  The kids need to learn to celebrate failures and learn from them.  

I will be one of the research project judges.  Here the kids can choose their own topic within a parameter with the goal that as a team they were able to come up with a mutually agreed upon topic as well as demonstrate that they are passionate about this topic.   The trainer went on to let us know that there is a particular challenge in this, as an individual it is fairly easy to find something that we are passionate about but once you start adding other people into the mix, it becomes increasingly more difficult.  The ultimate goal here is to make the case in a very short period of time for their topic and make it well enough that some one would want to do it and then share that idea with others.  

This was followed by: The teams need to demonstrate Gracious Professionalism which means I want to help you compete with me and I want to compete with you fairly.  She went on to say: We are here to have fun through Coopertition.  Yes, this is a competition and the teams are competing side by side but if a team does assist another team in meeting that team's goal, then as judges we need to recognize  and reward the demonstrated graciousness.  

The trainer continued on with a discussion of the rubrics and a reminder that any comments that we enter on to the rubrics should be positive because the teams will get them back because: we want to inspire these kids.  

In the midst of everything that is happening, this is a particular bright spot and I am grateful that I have the opportunity for this experience and I am really jazzed to see what fantastic things kids between the ages of 9 and 14 are capable of.