Liberty Christian School Blog

Thank you to all of the RoboLion friends, family, and supporters!

             This has been an incredible year, considering we didn’t begin our season until the end of October.  God has blessed us every step of the way. We were able to support four teams this year and what a challenge that was  

 at times, but we persevered. Many of our members had no clue what they were getting themselves into, but they came and they learned a little along the way. We cherish the hard work and dedication all of our teams put into this season. As many of you know, two of our teams had the opportunity to participate in the Robotics World Championship.

        We traveled to Dallas, Texas the first week of May to represent our school, our state, and our country. It was a great honor for all of us. We were given an exciting engineering challenge in the form of a game. Competing in a VEX sponsored program, students design, build, and program robots to meet the game requirements and compete all through the season. We competed in local/regional tournaments that feed into the state tournament, and the season concludes with a select few from the state going to a World Championship event. The VEX Robotics World Championship, presented by the Northrop Grumman Foundation, brings together the top VEX Robotics teams from around the globe to celebrate their accomplishments and participate to be crowned champions  At the championship we participated in a total of 10 teamwork challenges, 3 skill challenges, and one of our teams participated in the autonomous programming challenge.  That means they programmed their robot to drive on its own without a person controlling it.  Our teams accomplished this with courage and hard work.  They displayed good sportsmanship at all times, even when they were feeling discouraged. 

We end our season in the top 600 in the WORLD.  Not in the state, not in the country, but IN THE WORLD. That, my friends, is something to cheer about!

       Our children came home having experienced a life enriching experience. They came home with bigger dreams and a vision of larger scale competition!  At the end of the school year, we had to say goodbye to many of our graduating members. They will be greatly missed but we are glad to have had the opportunity to learn, build and compete together!  We look forward to the returning members and to our new friends that will be joining us in the next challenge of “SLAPSHOT” for the 2022-2023 season!

We are pleased to announce that Debbie Trail is rejoining LCS as our Art Teacher.  

       For those that did not work with Debbie previously, Mrs. Trail is returning to LCS to teach art again after a seven year stretch in semi-retirement. For the past 8 years she has worked as an Art Consultant at NW Hospital creating Art with and for patients. With the onset of COVID that was no longer possible and she began praying for an opportunity to use art again to encourage others.  Mrs. Trial had the privilege of teaching art at LCS for 22 years and experienced great joy integrating the gospel into her instruction. She loves to see what students are capable of creating and watching their creations unfold in the classroom. 

       Her Art career began after receiving a B.S. in Elementary Education from Towson and working as a Child Life Specialist with children at Kernan Hospital where she left as Director upon starting her family.

       She began teaching art at LCS in 1992 and received and maintained her ASCI Certification which challenged her with biblical, as well as educational, courses of study.

 Debbie and her husband are members, of Cornerstone Church and are active in various ministries there. Their son teaches Math at Winters Mill High School and he and his wife have four children. Their daughter is the Director of Underwriting at Kelly & Assoc. Insurance Group. They both attended LCS many years ago.

       Mrs. Trail and her husband enjoy bird watching, photography, summer trips to the Outer Banks, and special times with the grandchildren.

       She has had the privilege to see many former students pursue art in high school, college and as a career but what blesses her most, as their teacher, is to know that students have kept Christ first in their hearts and are growing in their faith.

Please join me in welcoming Mrs. Trail back to LCS!

Marcia Antoine, Head of School

Greetings from Liberty Christian School in the year 2017.  In 2017, there was no robotics program and nobody knew if one even existed.   There were Legos, computers, Knex, and Erector sets.

Then one day, a parent began to explore the options for students to learn more about STEM.  In the late summer of 2017 robotics became a reality for five students, four boys and one girl.  That’s me, Hannah. 

I was the only girl on the team. This  had its advantages and disadvantages. The boys mostly asked me to get things for them or to clean up stuff.  The boys really didn’t think much about me being there and often did their own thing until one day the coach asked the boys to do some documentation in the engineering notebook.

One of the boys responded with the comment,  “Can’t Hannah do that?”. Well... let me just say that never happened again.  My coach quickly stepped up to my defense and told the boys that I was not their secretary.  The whole dynamic of our team changed that day. I became one of the main coders last year and therefore did not do much building or driving.  We ended up having a very successful year with a great STEM project and went to the VEXIQ World Tournament.

That was such an amazing experience.  I listened to so many motivational speakers who wanted to encourage the next generation of young kids to reach for the stars.  One person in particular that stands out in my mind is Ayah Bdeir. We have chosen her as our STEM role model because she was brave and found a way to make her dreams come true.

She is a female that had a dream and didn’t let anyone stop her.  I am sure that her girl power found it necessary to include men in the making of her Little Bits along the way but she did not let them take over her project.   She had a desire for electronics to reach the hands of all children, male and female. She did so with the invention of Little Bits. They are like an electronic version of Legos.  They are so cool! She had done it, she stepped into a world where men mainly dominated and made herself known.

At the VEX IQ World Tournament she stood before me receiving the 2018 STEM
HERO award and was inducted into the REC Foundation Hall of Fame for her personal and professional contributions to young people.  Ayah said that the power of “electronics should be in everyone’s hands so that anyone can build, pro-type, and invent”. In 2014, Popular Mechanics recognized her as one of 25 makers who are reinventing the American dream for her creation of Little Bits.  Little Bits were created so that at the simplest level children and adults can play with lights, sounds, and sensors without any previous experience. How cool is that? I was so inspired by her that I couldn’t wait to get back to school to tell all my friends about it!   From that day forward everyone wanted to join the robotics team.

 Hi, my name is Elizabeth.  

Let’s jump forward to the summer of 2018.  I am one of the girls that was touched by Hannah’s enthusiasm of robotics and her trip to the World Tournament.  

This summer LCS began enrollment for its next robotics team. Three of their original teams members were not going to return in the fall.  After having the first year behind them the LCS robotics team was ready to recruit for year two. This year we have grown from one team to three teams.  Guess what the boy to girl ratio is this year?

I will give you a hint…. It is not 4:1.   It is 7:7! We are equal in number. When we use the term GIRL POWER we do not stress that we are better than the boys.  We just want to encourage other girls to take the step into the STEM environment and see the many fun opportunities that are there for them to try.

This picture shows the great support of our families.  Without them, none of this would be possible. They support us and our coaches.  They come to all of our tournaments and encourage us even when we don’t get a trophy.

We have as many girls interested as we do boys.  That is a great feeling to be in a group of equally diverse students.  Our coaches make sure that each of the students are equally challenged in all aspects of the program.  We all participate in brainstorming, building, coding, driving, and working in the engineering notebook.

We all take turns at doing everything so that we know all about our robot and how it was designed and built.  Some of us are stronger in certain areas than others, but we continue to encourage each other to learn and grow.  Our coaches make sure that there is never a job that is labeled as a boy/girl job and therefore we are all treated with equal challenges.  Our coaches really do rock ( by the way, we have two female coaches and one male coach)!

Now let’s travel to the state tournament and beyond… hopefully, the summer of 2019 will bring us even more excited participants and our teams will grow even more as more girls are empowered to step out and feel welcomed to join this crazy, fun, mind challenging, afterschool world known as robotics.  We are beginning to understand that it is about the journey and the things we learn and take with us along the way.

You may have been hearing about robotic teams lately, and wondering if it’s a good fit for your child. There are several robotics teams in the area, and they are worth looking into!  

First, though, consider the cost and the demand on your schedule.  Teams may meet 2-3 times per week, and fees of $100-$300 may be due up front.  If there is not room in your schedule during the school year, look into a summer robotics camp.

A robotics team can start as early as age 6-10, with a lego-based league that is a more gentle introduction to robotics principles. By high school, the teams are still fun, plus hard work, and more oriented toward coding and technology. FIRST calls their Robotics Competition “the ultimate Sport for the Mind,” and quotes its high-school student participants as saying it is “the hardest fun you’ll ever have.” In addition to FIRST leagues and competition, there is also VEX Robotics with its own teams and competition schedule.

At any age, kids who participate in a robotics program can gain a variety of skills from the experience: in addition to analytical thinking, math, and coding, they will inevitably experience trial and error; problem solving, managing time, resolving conflict, working with a team. These are the kind of life skills that kids can only learn by doing.