Photo courtesy Javier Alvarado.
At Henderson Elementary School, four teams of budding engineers are preparing to take the world robotics stage — without traveling far from home.
All four of the elementary school’s robotics teams will compete in the VEX Robotics World Championship later this month which will is held in Dallas. The Henderson teams make up nearly half of Dallas ISD’s nine teams entered in the annual competition, which brings hundreds of teams from across the world together to compete in design, arts, and STEM robotics challenges.
“This year has been an exceptional one. We competed in over 10 competitions and ranked high in them all,” Robotics Coach Javier Alvarado said. “(The Queen and Robo Hornets) were invited to Nationals in Iowa where we competed and ended up in fifth and sixth place.”
The four teams — named the Queen Hornets, the Robo Hornets, the Princess Hornets and the Baby Hornets — competed in qualifying competitions from October through January this year to make the world championship’s elementary school division. The Henderson robotics program is only in it’s fourth year, but were awarded 27 trophies this season.
The Queen and Robo teams qualified directly to the world championship through their ranking at the national competition, while the Princess and Baby teams qualified at a state competition.
This is the school’s first time having all four teams competing in the championship, signifying a “huge success” for Alvarado.
“Throughout the years as we have gotten more experience we have recruited more students,” said Coach Giovanni Fraire. “The students learn so many aspects of mathematics, engineering and design, they learn principals of coding. … Life lessons in teamwork, friendship and public speaking.”
The world championship is also an opportunity for the students to interact with other cultures, said Alvarado.
Last year, three of the Henderson Elementary teams qualified for worlds and were paired with teams from China. Although the students didn’t speak the same languages, Alvarado said he was able to watch the students learn to communicate over the course of the competition.
To keep spirit high, the Henderson teams have a chant they have become known for performing at competitions.
“By the end of the competition, the team from China they were paired with could hum along,” said Alvarado.
The championship will be held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center from April 25 to May 3.
