Robinson Helicopter donates to area middle schools
Scott Garmin arrives to work at Palos Verdes Intermediate on most mornings to the sight of a teacher’s dream.
The kids are excited to flood into the classroom and get to work. That’s because they are building cool stuff like robots and airplanes. They’re learning how to represent their concepts in three-dimensional drawings, how to translate those ideas to a computer program and eventually build their projects in a fabrication lab much like the process of a typical engineer.
“It’s unbelievable,” Garmin said. “A lot of kids are coming in an hour early to take this class just because they want to. Some are taking seven periods just so they can take this class.”
The high schools have offered robotics classes for several years, but for two years the middle schools in Palos Verdes Peninsula School District have offered classes through a curriculum it labels STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math).
In the seventh grade program students learn an introduction to robotics and computer design while in the eighth-grade program they study the science of flight and actually build things.
The middle school program was made possible through a $60,000 grant from Honda Motor Company and the Palos Verdes Peninsula Education Foundation. But the eighth-grade program lacked facilities to build their projects.
Torrance-based Robinson Helicopter Co. donated $15,000 each to Palos Verdes and Torrance school districts. In PV the funds went toward building fabrication labs at each of three area middle schools. Large 8-by-4-foot work benches allow students a safe workplace to construct anything from gliders to rockets and even small helicopters.
“It’s something we’ve been looking at for a while as a way to give back to the community,” said President Kurt Robinson. “The development of engineering and math in the school systems in our local community is important to us. We felt it was a way to directly help the community, but hopefully in the long run it helps us.”
Robinson Helicopter employs 1,300 people at its Torrance manufacturing headquarters adjacent to the Torrance Airport. The 600,000 square-foot facility produces roughly 500 helicopters per year.
According to standardized test scores, United States students are falling behind in science and technology, which makes hands-on learning opportunities like the ones offered at PV middle schools so valuable.
“This is the cure for that illness,” Garmin said, who described how it takes a little time, but eventually students are empowered to be able to effectively convey their design concepts and eventually build something from scratch.
“When they first start doing it they are frustrated,” Garmin said. “After a day or two of them trying it, they get it and can become so empowered that they can communicate their ideas by drawing them out like this in such a way that people will automatically recognize them. There’s nothing more frustrating then trying to explain something to someone and they can’t understand what you’re drawing.”
For the teachers, including Campbell Nimick at Miraleste and Paul Woodward at Ridgecrest who head the STEM programs at their schools, it’s been a rewarding challenge.
Garmin said he’ll often run into a fellow teacher at Home Depot or a local electronics store over the weekend buying things for their classes.
“This is so far above and beyond what you normally do in your teaching,” Garmin said. ER