“I got my hands on my head, please don’t shoot me dead.”

From the 5 days that I’ve been here marching and protesting thus far, this chant hits me the hardest.

I’ve been tear gassed 3 times, chased by an armored SWAT vehicle, and have had to hide under my steering wheel to avoid detection, in Ferguson, MO. And on the first night that officers patrolled the entire area on foot, when they stormed the crowd, I ran with my hands high, thinking that I could be taking my final steps. I’ll never forget running past the police, fighting back tears, with my hands as high as possible, afraid of my country.

Even the press wear helmets in Ferguson.

There is nothing romantic about these protests, about this moment in America. Ferguson is a grieving community currently processing its pain, disappointment, anger, and request for justice in front of the world.

As a kid, I remember the nights we slept on the floor because the gunshots were so close to the house and it was less likely that a bullet would go through a floorboard than a window or wall.

I became a teacher because I wanted to make sure that kids in communities like mine had the skills and opportunities to follow their dreams. I wanted to show my students that they, too, could master math skills and content and love it.

But I also want them to be alive. Kids deserve to walk down the street and feel free, feel like they have ownership of their bodies and the spaces in which they live. As the child of a recovered and recovering drug addicts, it is important to me that life circumstances don’t limit kids’ understanding of what is possible in their life and their world.

But you have to be alive to learn.

A key part of being college and career ready for many black boys is simply remaining alive until then. Mike Brown was just about to start college when he took his final breaths.

In this moment, we have an opportunity to be honest about how black bodies are policed in America. We have an opportunity to begin to be critical friends of the structures and systems that are the bedrock of our democracy.

I have to admit, in the 5 days that I’ve been here, this does not feel like an America that I know. I have never seen so many police in one place, let alone with rifles, in armored vehicles, and armed with smoke bombs, flash bombs, LRAD, and tear gas.

And we have to be honest about why the police are here. This town is afraid of a black community that is expressing its pain and anger with an unjust system. The structures in Missouri do not yet understand that anger is not synonymous with aggression. And that some will exploit anger, but some are not all.

Anger is a normal and healthy emotion that we feel when we think that we have been wronged. Imagine a community that is experiencing this around the same event, at the same time, in front of the world.

But the response to seeing anger manifest when it is in black communities cannot be the National Guard, as it is in Ferguson. We have to change systems and structures that attempt to police and manage black bodies to the point that freedom becomes purely conceptual, an imaginative framework attached to democracy.

The events of Ferguson are the culmination of experiences that a community has had when it feels that it has not been seen or heard as equals. Y’all, this is principled protesting in Ferguson. Even the most militant protestors will tell you that they are enraged at how Mike Brown’s body laid on the ground for hours while his parents grieved. They will tell you that Mike Brown’s limp body deserved an ambulance and not the back of a SUV. They will tell you that they are tired of marching, tired of being herded like animals in their own streets. And they are tired of voyeurs to their pain.

Here, in Ferguson, this community is looking for allies. This community is looking for people who are willing to assist in changing structural inequity in the name of social justice. And, simply, allies who fundamentally believe that black lives matter.

Since the beginning of the protests, I have carried a sign that reads, “My blackness is not a weapon.” This community wants blackness to be understood as complex, worthy, powerful, imaginative and gifted — just like all other races.

We are all in this community. We are Ferguson, too.

Each night that I go to protest, I am afraid. But I believe in justice. And I am my brother’s keeper.

A native of Baltimore, DeRay McKesson is a graduate of Bowdoin College and began his career as a 6th grade math teacher in New York City as a member of the 2007 Teach For America corps. As a teenager, he worked as a community organizer, training youth and adults to work together to overcome community challenges with Baltimore’s Safe and Sound Campaign. He has also worked for the Harlem Children’s Zone, opened an academic enrichment center for middle grades in West Baltimore, served on grant-making boards, and has worked for TNTP. The majority of his career, however, has been working for school systems, leading Human Capital initiatives. He was previously the Special Assistant in the Office of Human Capital with Baltimore City Public Schools for 3 years and is currently the Senior Director of Human Capital with Minneapolis Public Schools. He works to ensure that structures and systems support all kids and that only the most talented and able adults work with and support our schools and students.

This post originally appeared on Pass The Chalk, Teach For America’s blog.

The air is thick here in Ferguson.

Here, in my hometown, only 12 minutes from my house, the air is thick with racial tension, mounting distrust of authority, flowing tears of a community in grief and civil unrest and frustration with consistent injustice.

The air is also thick with tear gas.

By now, you’ve seen national news reports that tell you what I’ve known all my life: North County can be especially dangerous for black folk. Black men. Young black men. Young black men like Mike Brown.

Last Saturday, our young brother Mike, in whom his mother had placed her hopes and dreams, was murdered at the hands of someone meant to serve and protect, but who for decades has only been seen as one who intimidates and terrorizes.

Years earlier, my brother’s first encounter with police brutality occurred in a neighborhood with an eerily similar reputation, directly adjacent to Ferguson. My father, a well-respected Pastor and College Professor was thrown against the hood of his imported car and beaten as my brother watched, screaming and crying from the backseat.

My brother was 5.

That was 20 years ago.

In those 20 years, the story has remained the same. Strike that. The story has actually changed. It is now deadly.

For me, this means the anger which has been brewing for 20 of my 29 years of life has surfaced. It climbed to a peak when Mike was shot down like an animal, left to lie in the street for 4 hours. And when, after having breakfast on West Florissant to show solidarity and love to a strip that had been looted the night before, I was told that my stalled car wouldn’t be towed from a heavily policed area at 10 am,that rage grew..

And when I learned of the horror of young men armed only with cell phones being commanded to drop to their knees to then be sprayed with tear gas, and a pregnant woman being smashed into the pavement on her stomach for sitting in a car, that rage practically exploded.

I believe in non-violent civil action. I know that riots solve nothing. But I understand what Dr. King meant when he told Mike Wallace “a riot is the language of the unheard,” nearly 50 years ago. And in a community long overlooked, underserved, and continually harassed by law enforcement, the pressure finally burst the proverbial pipe.

But amidst my righteous rage, another, perhaps oxymoronic feeling emerged.

Love.

I feel love for our resilient children who face this harsh world every day.

I have love for our brave students who press forward toward the mark of the high calling even when they can’t see it. Students who demand the very best from us and who deserve nothing less.

I have love for our babies who lead lives that matter even if the world keeps telling them the opposite.

Because I listened to Dr. King when he also told us that “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The air is still thick in St. Louis. We’re still fighting for our dignity and demanding a fair shot.

But revolutionary love can begin to help us see our way through the fog, toward justice.

We must affirm the greatness and potential of our children every single day, because the world is showing them far too often that their lives don’t matter.

Education didn’t save Michael Brown. Racism killed him. There seems to be only one solution - end racism.

And so we must love our students enough to face the uncomfortable fact that, while issues of inequitable education, unemployment and poverty contributed to this crisis, racism is the cause for Mike’s death and the reason young black men are disproportionate targets of excessive force daily.

We must love our students enough to engage in the hard work of active anti-racism, confronting our own biases and ensuring that we dismantle deadly systems of racial dominance and oppression.

We must show our students the kind of revolutionary love that expects the most from them and demands the most of ourselves, as we determine to be actively anti-racist adults who build empowered children.

It’s what Michael would have wanted and what he deserved. “’Everyone else wanted to be a football player, a basketball player,” said Gerard Fuller, who had known Brown since second grade at Pine Lawn Elementary School. “He wanted to own his own business. He’d say, ‘Let’s make something out of nothing.’”

Here at home in St. Louis, we will press forward in love to honor him.

A native St. Louisan, Brittany Packnett is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from American University. She began her career as a third grade teacher in Southeast Washington, D.C. as a member of the 2007 Teach For America corps. Determined to make her students’ voices heard by critical policy makers, she moved to Capitol Hill and served as an education and domestic social policy legislative assistant to U.S. Representative Wm. Lacy Clay of Missouri, her hometown Congressman. Brittany continued in education policy work as a director of government affairs for Teach For America’s national team, advocating for the work of our teachers and students across the country and building champions for educational equity. As the daughter of educators and community leaders, Brittany is thrilled to have returned home to lead Teach For America — St. Louis as Executive Director, and fervently believes that St. Louis will one day be a center of access, equity, and freedom for every child.

This post originally appeared on Pass The Chalk, Teach For America’s blog.

Admit it — given the choice between reading a book and solving some algebraic equations, you’d pick the book. How about a technical journal vs. a fashion or sports magazine?

At a dinner out with multiple parties that ends up dividing up the bill, are you relieved when someone else offers to “do the math?”

Have you admitted to not understanding the details of your stock portfolio, your income taxes, your mortgage refinance, or even your paycheck?

And yet — you probably compare prices on groceries, cell phone plans, and airline tickets. You regularly look for sales and discounts. You can mentally inventory the contents of your refrigerator and estimate if you need to buy that extra pack of sliced cheese for lunches next week. You know which gas station sells the cheapest gas, even if it’s only by a few cents per gallon. You track your calories and your exercise in order to maintain or lose weight.

Where is this going? The question that really matters: If your child complains about his/her math homework, have you sighed and said, “Don’t worry — I was bad at math too…?”

Why is it socially acceptable to hate on math, but no one would ever say that they “hate vocabulary?” or “just don’t get words?” What kinds of attitudes do these statements convey to our children about the value of these concepts and skills?

One can hardly turn on the news today without hearing the phrase “STEM education.” STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Science brings out the explorer in all children. We have openly embraced technology and respect the problem-solving importance of engineering, yet we continue to have a prickly relationship with math.

I was a math teacher for 11 years, and I’ve been a math lover for over 30. I remember distinctly when I decided I loved math — it was in second grade at Sierra Elementary School, in Mrs. Gille’s class, learning my multiplication tables. As the chart on the wall grew with stickers recording our success mastering each set of number facts, my excitement over the patterns and logic of math grew as well. I loved that chart! And I loved, loved timed-tests — the pencils flying, the strategy of finding “easy” problems quickly, the excitement of answers coming so rapidly…

In high school, I discovered calculus in an Advanced Placement class taught by Jolene Kercher. My love of math propelled me to choose engineering, and I dove deeper into my math love affair. As an engineering major, math love was abundant amongst my classmates. We may have hated circuits, microprocessor systems or dynamics, but so many of my fellow students respected the predictability and elegant problem solving that comes with higher level calculus and beyond. Maybe it took six pages to solve a problem, but the techniques were known and fueled us like a puzzle book.

As I moved from undergraduate studies to post-graduate fellowship to PhD work to teaching middle school math and science, I discovered that the rest of the world not only didn’t love math — they were resistant as to its usefulness. Since then, I’ve spent many a checkout line at the grocery store trying to convince fellow shoppers of how much algebraic thinking is involved in their purchasing patterns.

At dinner parties, saying you teach math is usually met with groans — saying you love math — I am not even sure how people would react! Now that I am a national policy advocate for not just math but science, engineering, computer science, technology — I am deeply troubled by the societal acceptance of math hating.

Our lives are ruled by decisions we make based on mathematical thinking — affordability, investment, budgeting, rates… We weigh the costs of each purchase, we save up for a rainy day, we stretch our dollars, we push speed limits and memorize transit schedules. On a daily basis, we measure, estimate, apportion, reduce. We improve our homes, fix our cars, cook and bake. We shop for deals, guess at sizes, and estimate bank account balances or a dream purchase. We split a dessert, convince our kids to share and try to leave enough time for ourselves in an increasingly busy life. We cut back, diet, scale down and save.

All of these actions require not just a basic understanding of mathematics, but a fundamental mathematical mindset. I argue that we are not ‘bad at math,’ as some of us have been told — but bad at recognizing the power of math, the ubiquitous nature of mathematical thinking and the overwhelming reliance on mathematics in our society. And even worse at conveying the value of math to our youth?

As you check your watch, your phone and your email — trying to decide if you have time to forward this article to your friends, you are making use of those mathematical channels in your brain. Problem solving, forward planning and anticipating future outcomes — these are the types of skills stressed by STEM education. They start with the ability to strategize, recognize patterns and draw conclusions from data — all skills learned very early in mathematics.

So please — don’t hate on math. Take stock of how reliant you are on your ability to process numbers, percentages, rates and time. Recognize your innate talents in mathematics –and whatever you do — please stop telling your children that you aren’t good at math, lest they adopt the same attitude. Bottom line — math is everywhere, math is important, and we should all be ready to tell our kids that we use it every day because we need it. We may not all love math, but in order to reverse the trend of generations of math-haters, we have to change our message to our children.

Camsie McAdams, a former math and science teacher of 10+ years, holds a Master’s in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is currently the Senior Advisor on STEM Education at the US Department of Education.

This post originally appeared on Pass The Chalk, Teach For America’s blog.

In April, 14-year-old Christine Vela, a student in Teach For America’s Poet Warriors Project, shared a poem called “Breaking the Silence.” It included these lines:

With one heart-wrenching throwback of this closet,

I’ll say the words I’ve been meaning to say

My whole life.

I’m lesbian.

Christine recorded a video reading of her poem for the Poet Warriors Project, and this act of bravery garnered national attention (a BuzzFeed staff writer, who highlighted the video in an LGBTQ poetry roundup, said, “Seriously, I have nothing more to say—just watch.”) This June, as TFA celebrates Pride Month, Poet Warriors founder Emily Southerton asked Christine about social justice, SAFE classrooms, and more.

Emily Southerton: With your poem, you broke the silence and shared your own personal story. What role does personal storytelling play in social justice movements?

Christine Vela: Personal storytelling, especially in social justice movements, plays the role of illustrating day-to-day oppression in a relatable way. This concept is manifested in a variety of art forms, and is especially prominent in spoken-word poetry. I believe it somewhat relates to the concept of “show, don’t tell,” as well, however simple it may seem. One of my favorite slam poets, Guante, has just begun a series on the art of spoken word poetry. In his very first video in the series, he explains the difference between showing and telling, and to summarize this concept, I’ll simply use a quote he says in his video: “Don’t write a poem about war. Write a poem about what it’s like to stand in your brother’s empty bedroom.” In the former example, it is easy to dismiss the concept in question, whereas in the latter, it is more emotionally insightful, playing upon the audience’s feelings in a way that they can better understand. The concrete imagery of a brother’s empty bedroom makes the concept of war more real to one who has never experienced it. It is the authenticity of one’s personal narrative—the good, the bad, and the ugly—that advances movements, and not simply the discussion of ideas in a way that leaves out the humanity of the people in question, though the discussion of those ideas is certainly important as well.

A family member of mine used to be a community organizer for an education-advocacy group, and in an email interview I conducted with him, he also mentioned the importance of storytelling in pushing education reform. In his email to me, he explained:

It’s one thing to talk about how, for example, school choice needs to be better invested in because there is a lot of parents who don’t have the option of sending their kids to good schools (an ed-reform idea) on the one hand, and having a PARENT talk about how she has struggled for years to find a good school for her kid and how she lives with the anxiety that her child will never be able to follow her dreams because her school will likely fail in adequately preparing her on the other.

Once again, in the former example, it is easier to shrug off the problem (and, as a result, the systems of oppression working to make it possible) so that it remains unresolved, whereas in the latter, one can see how the school-choice system—as it remains—is broken, and as a result, is negatively impacting families who want the best for their children. To conclude, I’ll leave another quote from my family member’s interview here:

Without people on the ground, getting organized and speaking out, ed-reform would be a wonky and esoteric idea, regardless of how great it is.

What role do gay-straight alliances (GSAs) play for students, and what are your personal experiences with them?

Gay-straight alliances can suit a number of purposes within schools, each individual to what each school needs/desires. However, the one thing that gay-straight alliances all have in common is this: they serve as a safe space for LGBTQ students and their allies in school for whatever purpose the alliance may serve, be it for students to engage in activism, promote education and awareness about LGBTQ issues, or simply be that safe space to hang out.

In my personal experience with gay-straight alliances—having both founded one in my school and lived with the silence of living without that safe space—I know that as a sixth-grader uncovering my queer status, I would have felt more supported had it been there before I arrived. Albeit that I came out to my entire school with the poem “Breaking the Silence” the same year, I have friends who have only recently began coming to terms with their LGBTQ identities, who have known for years but have been too afraid of ridicule at school to accept themselves, topped with pressure to fit into hetero/cisnormative expectations set at home.

Gay-straight alliances, for some LGBTQ youth, are the single supportive space they have in their lives to even begin being who they are; gay-straight alliances are that light in the gloomy closet that assures LGBTQ youth there is a place where they fit into the world.

My school’s particular gay-straight alliance was centered around the purpose of social activism and education while functioning as that safe space at the same time, and we worked to dismantle homophobia and transphobia within our school. In our student handbook, for example, while there were consequences for bullying based on sexual orientation, I brought up the fact that transgender and gender-nonconforming youth were left out of that description. Thus, my school’s GSA and our principal worked so that discrimination based on gender/gender expression was added to the list. Although it may seem small, I know firsthand the sting that comes with being excluded from even the most minor things, because so often have LGBTQ individuals been excluded from the most important. I also know that even the smallest gesture of support can mean the world to an LGBTQ student living in the closet. Thus, our gay-straight alliance also worked to make our school more inclusive of LGBTQ students.

Why is it important for teachers to play a part in creating SAFE classrooms for all students?

It is important for teachers to play a part in creating a safe classroom for all students simply because students cannot learn effectively when they are not in a safe environment to do so. At my middle school, luckily for me, teachers and staff have been incredibly understanding and supportive of my (and other students’) coming out; I cannot think of a single time that a teacher or staff member has attempted to stifle my self-expression and identity, and can think of dozens of times when they have urged me on to express myself and my beliefs. I can also come up with dozens of names of teachers at my school who would, if an anti-LGBTQ slur was used, immediately handle the situation by turning it into a “teachable moment” or delving into the history of those words.

A large part of this conversation—that is, a teacher’s responsibility to create a safe space for all students, which I believe also includes policing language—is a teacher’s responsibility to educate about LGBTQ issues, to a certain extent, regardless of the subject that they teach. Some teachers, especially those in the sciences, may find it difficult to create that safe space because it is more difficult to teach about those LGBTQ issues, as it often doesn’t pertain to the subject they teach. This is understandable. Certainly, I do not suggest that a math teacher give a lecture about the history of the Stonewall Riots in the middle of class, but I do believe it is necessary to address homophobic or transphobic speech used by students in the classroom. Words have histories, and those histories give them their meaning. Words can build, and they can also destroy, a concept I am sure that the Poet Warriors Project is well aware of. I have been brought to tears by the use of words like “joto” (which is the equivalent of “faggot,” but in Spanish) being tossed around mindlessly by my straight, cisgender peers, but I recognize many of them do not know the origins of this word, nor the effects it has on LGBTQ youth. The inaction of teachers—and, for some, the blatant disregard of the importance of policing anti-LGBTQ language—sends a message to LGBTQ youth that their discomfort is unimportant and, to some, an “overreaction.”

It reinforces the age-old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” without realizing that it is language like this that makes it possible for violence to be enacted upon LGBTQ students.

It is language like this—language that is so often used without the perpetrator’s knowledge of the weight in their breath—that perpetuates the suicide and self-harm statistics that persist in the LGBTQ community. It is a teacher’s responsibility to make a classroom a safe space for everyone to learn, whatever the cost.

In a brilliant phone conversation with TFA staff, you said that educators need to understand their students’ culture and systems of oppression in general. Can you explain why you think cultural competency is important? What are specific steps educators can take to begin understanding their students’ culture and systems of oppression?

Teachers need to understand their students’ culture and be educated about systems of oppression in general simply because culture and systems of oppression are two intricately tied concepts that weave every aspect of a person’s life, following them inside and outside of the classroom.

A teacher cannot expect a student to leave their culture and their oppressions and their privileges at the doorstep, nor should they expect that of their students. If education is to serve as an asset in a student’s life, it should serve to interact with the barriers students face every day instead of trying to cut them out of the picture, presenting itself as a viable option toward tackling those barriers and enriching one’s life in general. Otherwise, what purpose does that education serve if it is blind to the very things that matter most in a student’s life?

This is especially true of teachers working with students of color and low-income communities, as obstacles such as gang violence, poverty, and racism are the norm, not the exception. Besides, in my experience, I have found that my peers and I hold a greater amount of appreciation and respect for teachers who actively try to engage with our cultures, regardless of the power dynamics that may implicate our communication, and actively try to recognize our struggles as people of color, working-class citizens, and more. Across my school’s network, 95 percent of students identify as students of color, with a Latino majority, and 90 percent qualify for reduced-price or free lunch. Thus, it is especially important that teachers recognize and understand student culture and the systems of oppression that shape our lives.

As for specific steps teachers can take to understand systems of oppression, I feel the first step is one of self-reflection:

Teachers must examine the privileges and oppressions they face in their own lives.

This will require at least a general knowledge of different types of oppressions and privileges, but I also believe it is important for teachers to make learning about systems of oppression a part of their daily lives, if they hope to foster an understanding of their students. Acknowledging and accepting the ways in which we are both privileged and oppressed is essential to actively working to make ourselves less-oppressive people.

Next, it is important to evaluate how a teacher’s privileges and oppressions have shaped their daily lives, especially the ways in which they interact with their students. Unfortunately, teachers are not immune to imposing oppression on their students, as it may seep into their teaching in the subtlest of ways, however frightening it may seem. The school-to-prison pipeline is great evidence of this. Teachers must be daring enough to ask themselves in which ways they may have oppressed their students in the past, be it ignoring the voices of a certain group of people, valuing the voices in others, tokenizing members of a particular group, punishing certain groups more than others, ingraining oppressive ideas into curriculum, and more. Teachers must ask themselves how their privileges and oppressions may implicate the ways they interact with their students, the way their students view them, and the way they view their students. As Dylan Garity said in his poem “Friend Zone,” “You cannot kill a monster until you are willing to see in the mirror.”

And finally, as for understanding student culture, it’s a matter of doing all of the above. Then, it is taking time to interact with students and create a platform for them to share their voices. The Poet Warriors Project is a great example of this kind of platform, and I can think of a number of my teachers who interact with their students effectively in this way. Since our school is 90 percent Latino, I know of a teacher of mine who allots time out of her day to learn Spanish, even if it is not her native tongue. She is open with her students about her experiences and uses her openness to gradually open up her students. Another teacher I know, who is Latina herself, tries to integrate her experiences as a Latina woman with her teaching so students can better relate to her. They are both very educated about social justice issues and systems of oppression, and students trust them because of their openness to discuss these issues.

Above all, students are looking for authenticity. They are looking for teachers to acknowledge their struggles instead of ignoring them.

More than anything, I believe that establishing oneself as an open teacher who is knowledgeable about and willing to discuss systems of oppression is key to getting students to open up, as the most effective way to learn about student culture is from students themselves. When students are given the space to use their voices, others can begin to learn from them.

You end your poem “Breaking the Silence” with the lines “I’m not any different than I was before, except maybe a little less burdened, and I only hope you feel the same way, for I have just broken my silence.” Do you think the nation is also “less burdened” when students share their stories?

The interesting thing about that line is that, at the time when I wrote it and performed it for the first time, I didn’t realize the duality of the burden I was carrying. I wrote “Breaking the Silence” and performed it to my entire school the same day two years ago.

In losing the burden of remaining silent about my identity to my peers, I gained both a burden and a blessing: the one of being an out LGBTQ individual at a time when I had no idea whether my peers would have accepted me or ostracized me.

Luckily for me, I was embraced and celebrated. But even now, I must worry about coming out to others in the future, taking care of where I travel, and being a visible queer person in general. That is the price paid for being an LGBTQ person those in my life can look to, but I still think it’s worth it. So, in short, I believe that the nation is more and less burdened in many ways when students like me share their stories. However, I feel that this is a good thing. It puts more pressure on others to have the difficult conversations they’re afraid of having. It creates visibility of LGBTQ people and their issues, advancing the movement. It gives hope to other LGBTQ individuals who may be afraid to be visible. Regardless, the burden will pay off.

So you can imagine my surprise when I became a teacher and found out my school didn’t offer athletics. I felt my students were missing a key educational opportunity and I wanted to do something about it.

That’s when the robots came in.

After doing some research, I learned about FIRST Robotics, a program that brings thousands of high school students together from across the world to test their engineering, programming, and critical-thinking skills. The more I researched, the more I realized FIRST—with its rule of gracious professionalism—combined all the benefits of athletics while giving students skills to succeed in an increasingly technological society.

So with the help of two other members of our school’s science department and grants from JCPenny and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, Team 4780 was created with 12 student members.

Just like with any sport, there was a natural learning curve. Few of us had any robotics experience, which made for more than a couple frustrating setbacks. Yet setback was followed by persistence and a willingness to learn from mistakes. The students turned into sponges. Soon enough, kids who had never touched a power tool were drilling through shatter-prone sheets of acrylic Plexiglas. They were glued to computers, playing virtual simulations and scouring YouTube to learn from videos other teams had posted.

After long nights spent teaching myself in an effort to stay ahead and mentor them, I realized that in order to meet our increasing demands, I needed to bring in outside resources.

The first came from NASA when their Glenn Research Center sent a volunteer to teach basic programming through Lego’s Mindstorms robotics kit. Encouraged by the experience, most students signed up for a post-secondary robotics course offered by a local community college. Next, we took a field trip to a General Motors plant to expose students to the careers they could achieve as engineers.

All of the buzz resulted in our team growing from a group of 12 to 10 percent of the entire student body. The buzz then turned into a roar. The whole school signed up for the Hour of Code, hosted by code.org, and was selected to video chat with Bill Gates. Students packed into my classroom to hear Gates talk about the importance of computer science, the opportunities it presents, and the characteristics needed to succeed. The students then wrote their first computer program, amazed at how accessible it was once they tried.

Within minutes of FIRST announcing the year’s challenge, the team was busy evaluating possible designs and collaborating on strategy. They calculated which parts they needed and where to buy them. They recognized potential bottlenecks for parts construction and planned how to multitask around them. They called businesses to fundraise and developed partnerships with local corporations and universities.

Then it was go time. Teams had traveled across the country with budgets four times our size, yet as our students looked around the competition, they knew they could compete. Quickly, Team 4780 began pitching their game strategy and preparing for practice rounds. The other teams and the judges were impressed with the robot our team had created with such a limited budget. Unfortunately, a few mechanical setbacks kept it from advancing, dashing the team’s hopes of traveling to St. Louis for the FIRST championships. Nevertheless, all the students recognized this as an opportunity to grow and kept a positive attitude as they scouted best practices of the teams that did advance.

Whatever the scoreboard, what we’ve created is something even better than athletics. Because while the NCAA states that 98 in 100 high school athletes will never play a collegiate sport, Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST, has said that there is a technology job for every single participant of FIRST. The organziation even provides over $19 million in scholarships to help get them there. Robotics provides the same interpersonal skills that athletics does, but adds technical training for a career in science and technology. Because of this, I look forward to day when robotics receives the same attention sports can garner.

Trevor Sprague graduated from the University of Georgia where he earned his bachelors of science in Biology. He joined Teach For America as part of Northeast Ohio’s 2012 charter corps and currently teaches high school science.