We Real Cool By Gwendolyn Brooks

Student teams earn honors at science competition

Syracuse city students (left to right) Corey Winney Henninger High School, Tuyen Huynh Fowler High School, Natalie Brooks Lincoln Middle School, Timmy Nguyen Henninger High School, Ethan Dunkan Lincoln Middle School, Alicia Gorman Lincoln Middle School, Shaddyamndeep Sing (back) Henninger High School, and Tuyen Huynh Fowler (front right) High School, placed in national engineering competition. Brooks, Dunkan, and Gorman, placed 4th in the middle school division of the mouse trap competition. Nguyen, Sing, and Winney placed 5th in the high school division of the mouse trap competition. Huynh, Huynh, and Winney took 3rd place in the vex robotic competition. Students pose in front of Edwin A. Link Hall on Syracuse University campus. Link Hall is home of the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science. SU along with other local businesses helped sponsor the kids in the national engineering competition. Vex Robots. Mousetrap-powered cars. It may sound like science fiction, but for Syracuse City School District students, it’s very real. And, it comes with some national recognition.

Teams from Henninger High School and Lincoln Middle School captured fifth- and fourth-place titles in the Mousetrap Car Division while Fowler High School earned third place in the Robotics Division at the Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering National Science Program Competition. Each team placed first in a regional competition to qualify for the nationals held in June at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. It was the first time city schools entered a robotics team, so the coaches and students consider the third-place finish quite an accomplishment.

“We felt ecstatic because it was a big competition and we did so well and worked so hard,” said Lincoln eighth-grader Alicia Gorman.

The mousetrap car is judged on a technical report and drawing, performance and an interview of all three teammates. The Vex Robot must be built to consortium specifications and complete a given task. This year the remote robot had to stack rings on a post. Each team had to work in conjunction with another team from the competition to complete the goal in an assigned time frame.

“It gives the students complex problems to solve in collaboration, because that is what businesses are asking of young people today.” said Gwendolyn Maturo-Grasso, Lincoln Middle School teacher and a team coach.

SECME was established in 1975 as the Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering by the engineering deans at six Southeastern universities. In 1997, the name was changed to SECME Inc., and the group expanded its service area to 17 additional states, including New York. Its mission is to increase the pool of minority students who will pursue studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

How does “June” in Gwendolyn Brooks' “We Real Cool” represent ...

It could be in the way it’s used after “jazz,” jazz meaning to goof off, and the poet uses June only because it has an alliteration with jazz. July wasn’t chosen, because there isn’t any school and establishment going on then. January has 3 syllables and so doesn’t go with the poem being terse as much as June.

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