Megan Navarro
BUDA — A new summer camp option is being offered at Barton Middle School for incoming fifth and sixth grade students this year.
The camp — Hays Robotics Camp — was created by Chris Glynn, who has been teaching engineering and robotics at Barton Middle School for 11 years, and Grant Dohmen, a 13-year-old student with a passion for business and creating, along with five years of engineering experience. They both knew that they wanted to share their love for the field and teach these skills in an engaging environment.
“[Dohmen’s] on the robotics team that we have here on campus and so, we have an after school program. We started talking about it and Grant brought the idea to me: ‘Hey, I would like to offer a camp for young kids. We can get them interested in robotics,’” Glynn said, adding that it’s a partnership between the two, as Dohmen has worked to do all of the marketing, developed the curriculum, brought in the equipment and more.
Campers can expect to build base frame, 10-inch by 12-inch robots, adding sensors, structures and motors to go through a series of tasks. There will be a building component, but Glynn shared that they will also introduce the students into the “coding world,” where they can create the instruction for the robot to complete the tasks.
The leaders are looking forward to being able to offer the camp that will benefit the students who may not be interested in participating in other extracurricular activities, like sports, as well as showing them that there are alternative future career options.
“I want kids to realize these are jobs that can actually benefit them in the future with the skills that we're giving these kids. As the world becomes more automized, the robotics thing is spreading out more and more. I just want to get kids interested and I want to get them motivated into these jobs that are going to be available to them when they get older,” Glynn said. “I hope we're hitting the mark for some of these kids because not everybody can be a football player or basketball. It's something that we're offering and hopefully they can engage in over the summer. We can teach them a little bit of logic, they might get involved with some coding down the road and just kind of show them what's out there.”
“We'd love for them to fall in love with robotics, but really, we just want to introduce this to as many people as possible, so people interested can learn about this not necessarily new, innovative field,” Dohmen said.
Beyond the teaching component, having an entrepreneurial spirit at a young age, Dohmen shared that he is also excited to be learning to operate “something more than a lemonade stand” that he can put on his college applications and prepare him for the future.
“I wanted to sort of put my skills to the test and help the community. I'm just excited to be doing this because I want to get better at all the marketing skills and all that type of stuff,” the student said.
There are three sessions available for the summer camp, with all being for a half-day. For the first week, June 1-5, there will be morning and afternoon groups available from 8:30-11:30 a.m. and 12:30-3:30 p.m. However, currently, for the second week, from June 29-July 3, there will only be morning sessions, with the possibility of adding an afternoon group if there are increased enrollment numbers.
Nineteen students have fully registered, as of Monday, May 4, with a total of 42 students that can be accommodated — any incoming fifth and sixth grade student within Hays CISD is welcome to register.
The cost for the camp is $150 per session, with proceeds going to funding the robotics program and clubs at Barton Middle School.
For more information about the camp, visit www.sites.google.com/view/kyleroboticscamp/home.
