What I Learned In A Simulation Class

Walking into the class, I was not sure what to expect. I had no prior knowledge of robotics and I have little knowledge of programming. If I am being completely honest, I honestly thought this class was going to be lecture based with little to no hands on activities. Needless to say, I was quite surprised when I found out that I was completely wrong. I was not aware before signing up for the class that we were going to receive a robot. Upon that realization, I was fairly intrigued. I was excited that I was going to be able to build a robot and then program it accomplish tasks.
I do no really recall a time in my childhood when I played with Legos, so I was excited when I found out that we were required to reassemble the robot after taking it …show more content…
I had no prior experience with any camp nor had I any experience with 5th and 6th graders. I looked up pictures from the year prior and in my mind I thought that this was not going to be hard. I had the expectation that all I was going to be doing was watching kids play with robots and helping them figure out solution to their program when they were stuck, but boy was I wrong. I went about it all wrong. I was more interested in getting through the class than actually learning something. I wanted the 3 credits more than anything. I am glad that I got more out of the class than I …show more content…
There was this one kid that really did not want to listen. Coming into STEM camp, I had the mentality that yelling at a student was a sure fire way to get them to listen and cooperate. Again, I was wrong. I was not able to get communicate effectively with this student and he caused a lot of trouble. I constantly yelled at him for three days before I realized that yelling was not the solution. He was not going to listen, no matter how much I yelled at him and asked him to stop acting out. On the fourth day, I went in with a different approach, I gave him positive comments. Sure enough, I saw a change in the way that he acted around me. He actually listened to me and communicated with me effective. I guess some kids need that; they are so used to being yelled at that they become numb to the effect of it. It is crazy because he had potential, every kids had potential, but he just does not know how to apply it yet. When we went on the tour of the engineering building he was genuinely excited about planes. He whipped out his phone and was constantly taking pictures of everything. I personally saw it as a positive sigh, because that was the first time that he actually showed interest in something. My overall experience with him taught me how to handle kids better and more effectively. Sometimes the best thing that you can do is ignore negative behavior and reinforce positive behavior.
The overall STEM camp experience was amazing. I would definitely