Making Connections Monday: Brenham Junior High Robotics Team #BJHwired #IChooseBrenham

The Brenham Junior High Robotics Team, led by BJHS teacher Christine Cmajdalka, recently competed at the Brazos BEST Robotics Competition at James Earl Rudder High School in Bryan, Texas. Cmajdalka, who is entering her sixth year at Brenham Junior High, leads the Robotics Team as part of the Gifted and Talented program and also teaches eighth grade Advanced English. In order to prepare for the competition, student programmers learned math lab programming by watching YouTube and training videos. Cmajdalka’s design team met with local engineers from the ESS Group to build, reengineer, and rebuild robots to complete specific missions.

When the team reached the competition, they were simply given a box of hardware supplies and informed of the mission the robot needed to complete. The students had to design, build, and program the robot to complete the assigned mission. The theme for this year’s BEST competition was Pay Dirt - A Mining Mission. The robot’s mission was to go into a mine that was not safe for humans to collect precious minerals and perform other tasks to make the mining situation better for humans.

The Brenham Junior High Robotics Team made it to the semifinals and came home with two awards - The BEST Heart Award and the BEST First Year Team Award. The team members include (back row from left to right) Cole Gaertner, Rowdy Weidemann, Thang Pham, Derrick Chovanec, Jacob Counts, Mrs. Cmajdalka, (front row) Christina Powell, Joshua Cruz, and Carson Melead.