Good Morning, Neighbor!

I hope you and your home and other belongings stayed safe yesterday with the high winds, torrential rains, and overall nastiness. Today and tomorrow will be clear, but wow did it get cold. Please take care out there, especially when walking up and down steps. There’s bound to be patches of ice!

Don’t forget to share the Buzz with Burlington friends and neighbors!

Today, at long last, I want to tell you about an amazing group of kids (and their mentor) who have worked exceptionally hard this season. You might remember that our FIRST LEGO League (FLL) robotics team presented their project at the Planning Board meeting several weeks ago. Since then I’ve been dying to tell you about them, but I wanted to wait until the state competition happened last weekend before sharing the whole story.

Our FLL team is headed by Heather Peckham, who has been working with the team since 2018 when her older son was a member. Believe it or not, the six fifth graders who were on that 2018 team are now in HIGH SCHOOL and eligible to participate in the BHS FIRST Robotics team you’ve heard so much about.

The current team is made up of MSMS middle-schoolers Evan Peckham, Noah Melo, and Aaryan Dash, and Francis Wyman fifth-grader Shruti Vijayakumar. Most of this crew has been working together through the pandemic—outside at first, then in the garage, and now finally they’re starting to move their work indoors.

This change in venues created its own challenges, as the young people quickly discovered that electronic components act differently in different temperature conditions. But that only strengthened the team’s problem solving and collaboration abilities. In fact, one of the judging criteria for FLL competitions is that the kids design and create their project completely independently, and that all team members are equally involved in the process. The judges go as far as to have all members of a team (in a room without their coach) explain what they did and how they did it.

This year’s theme was “The Energy Journey,” and when they had trouble coming up with an idea, Heather (whose role is as facilitator and nothing more) coached them to think of untapped resources that others might not think of. They initially thought maybe they could create a wheel that could convert the movement of waste (sewage) through pipes to electrical energy. However, when conversations revealed that the wheel would get clogged with sewage, the team decided to move in a different direction.

They realized in their meetings with town officials that there is an extensive network of stormwater drains in the town, and that water is constantly flowing through them. With this small alteration to their original plan, they were able to create a functioning product to present at the Planning Board and at the FLL competitions they attended over the last two weekends at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Only 25% of teams make the state championship, and after qualifying last year and not being able to attend, the team set their sights on reclaiming that spot—and they did! They took home the Judges Award on December 10, and brought home a second place Innovation Project trophy from among 70 teams at the state competition last Saturday.

Throughout this process, team members develop independence and problem solving skills—their performance at competition depends on it. Shruti, who set up the meeting with DPW officials, credits her older brother with getting her involved in robotics—she says she learned a lot by watching him.

Aaryan and the rest of the middle-schoolers set up meetings with teachers during their information gathering phase. He says he did robotics before, but didn’t feel included. He didn’t want to start FLL at first, fearing the same outcome, but he’s glad he did. The focus on teamwork and core values really ensures everyone is included.

When asked one of the biggest challenges of this work, Evan said, “The robot doesn’t always work!” This team demonstrated lots of perseverance during the course of this project, creating eight different iterations until they got the robot working correctly.

Super congratulations to this hard-working team, and best wishes on your future endeavors!

Today in Burlington

Meetings and Events

• 12:00 PM-2:00 PM – Live Nativity at United Church of Christ, Congregational. This is supposed to happen, and I haven’t heard that it’s not happening, but I kind of doubt it based on the fact that it’s 20 degrees below freezing outside. Please check before going.

Sports and Activities

Score Update

Our Boys’ Gymnastics team won the Alumni Meet last night, for the fourth time in its history!

The news isn’t so good for the Boys’ Swim Team, who lost to Lexington 72-88 on Thursday.

That’s all for me. I will be taking tomorrow off, and I hope you have a wonderful end-of-Hanukkah or Christmas celebration if you celebrate it.

Nicci