Mentoring

The day before the embassy event, we prepared at Dare to Dream's office with students from a local FIRST LEGO League team. Together we set up the hands-on stations for the event, each to be run by one of us and one of them: a robot game demo, a code-it-yourself area, an innovation project and the core values. I also taught them some programming to get them ready for the event, and a teammate and I wrote the "Introduction to FIRST and FLL" speech we would give there.

With Dare to Dream we ran a cultural exchange at Mogoditshane Senior Secondary School in Gaborone for more than 50 students, some visiting from Mogoditshane Junior Secondary. After speeches from the schools' leadership, Dare to Dream's founder and our coach, and a performance by the school's dance club, we walked them through FIRST LEGO League: the robot game, the innovation project and the core values, and how FIRST is about leadership and communication as much as technical skill. Then we split into small groups. I went through the SPIKE Prime code I'd written for the day, into Python and more advanced code for anyone who wanted it, and some students stayed more than half an hour after the end to keep asking questions.