Ten years ago, a story appeared in Wired magazine about four high school students in Arizona, all of them undocumented immigrants from Mexico, who built an underwater robot which beat a team from MIT in a national competition to take first place. (The original story is re-published here: http://www.wired.com/2014/12/4-mexican-immigrant-kids-cheap-robot-beat-mit/ ) That story has so captured the public’s imagination that it has been documented in a book, soon to be published, and a movie, soon to be released. The story of the four is quite remarkable. With a history of academic failure and intermittent gang membership, one of the four decided to join the after-school robotics program because he had nothing else to do, and he didn’t want to be on the streets. Another lived in a shed attached to his parent’s trailer, and ate his lunch alone at school in the storage room that served as the robotics club HQ. Still another had been in ROTC and was headed for a life in the military, but being undocumented he was ineligible. And so the four of them banded together, looked to adults for expertise and specialized knowledge, and raised a modest sum from local businesses. It is a story of triumph over adversity, of how the limits we face are truly those we set ourselves, of how nothing is larger than a dream, or more durable.
So it is with our students too. While not facing the specific challenges of those four, they too struggle with getting others to believe in them, and with believing in themselves. They too have known the slings and arrows of bullying and teasing, of personal hardship and alienation. And in robotics too, just as with those four, we have seen our students thrive, learn a new terminology, take pride in creating, and turn themselves inside out to become self-assured and accomplished. At Village Glen we are proud to offer classes like those: robotics, computer programming, 3D modeling, and AP Environmental Science, classes that nurture our students’ natural curiosity and talents, and in the process develop their passion, and give them purpose.

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