Every day teachers motivate and inspire their students, pushing them to believe in themselves and what they are capable of achieving. Fredi Lajvardi is one of those teachers. As a creator of a student robotics program at Carl Hayden Community High School in Phoenix, Arizona, he built an environment that fostered creativity and challenged students in an engaging way. I recently had the experience to hear Fredi Lajvardi speak at the P21 Summit on 21st Century Learning about his experiences inspiring students to be successful both inside and outside the classroom.
Carl Hayden Community High School is a predominately Hispanic school where many of the students do not speak English as their first language and come from low income families. Being a part of the robotics team erases the disparity between students and gives them a chance to succeed by providing them with skills they need to secure jobs.
In 2004, Lajvardi entered his students in the college division of the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) Competition. Lajvardi and his colleague, Allan Cameron, surprised themselves, their students and the nation when the Carl Hayden Community High School Falcon Robotics Team beat MIT and other college teams in an underwater robotics competition.
In the MATE competition students needed to build a robot that could complete certain tasks underwater. The team had less than $1,000 to build their robot, named Stinky, which they made out of PVC and other materials they were able to buy at Home Depot. Competitor team’s robots were made from machined and welded metal and had corporate sponsorships. Despite their humble robot, Lajvardi’s students placed 3rd in the underwater competition, 1st in design and technical writing for their manual, and were the overall winners of the competition, besting some of the country’s top college engineering students.
Surprisingly, few media outlets picked up the story at the time they won the MATE competition in 2004. WIRED magazine ran an article La Vida Robot in 2005 and in 2014 the original WIRED article author Joshua Davis went back to speak to the four students and wrote a book called Spare Parts: 4 Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream. In January 2015, the movie Spare Parts was made, starring George Lopez as Fredi Lajvardi. Also in 2015, a documentary called Underwater Dreams was released.
The recent publicity of their story gave the Falcon Robotics Team resurgence and has highlighted the success stories of some of their robotics students. The Falcon Robotics Team continues to compete in FIRST Robotics Competitions and has won numerous awards at the state, regional, and international level. In 2013, Lajvardi was honored with the Woodie Flowers Award by FIRST for leading and inspiring his team.
His amazing story encouraged me to think about what educators can do to inspire students and help them succeed despite numerous obstacles. Can you think of other educators who are making an impact like this in your community? We would love to hear from you!
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