On DC’s hot and humid summer days, some students are spending their mornings building robots and learning about medicine.
Laila, a 13-year-old heading to 8th grade, was originally drawn to the “mini-medics” portion of the Career and Technical Education Enrichment Program out of DC’s public school system. But she’s been surprised how much she’s loved building robotics and coding its movements — so much that last Thursday, she coached the city’s mayor in how to operate her robot.
It took her four days to build the bot, using a kit from the company Vex IQ. It was difficult, Laila said, because each piece needs to be precisely placed.
“Once you start it, it’s either you’ll have fun or you’ll get frustrated,” Laila told Technical.ly. “When you get frustrated, you’ll just try to do better.”
She gave Mayor Muriel Bowser advice on how to get her creation to place a block in a bin at Brookland Middle School in Northeast DC. After a couple of minutes of attempting to finesse the robot’s arms to grab the piece of plastic, Bowser gave up and handed the controller back to Laila.
That actually sent a positive message to the kids, per teacher Rabiah Harris, because it showed robotics is not an easy subject.
“They were very worried about, ‘What would she think if my robot’s not fully together?’” said Harris, who teaches during the year at Eliot-Hine Middle School. “But it does take time, and I think it was good for some of them to see even that she didn’t get the cube in right away.”
This educational program is part of a broader approach by the DC government to engage young people through initiatives like summer camps, the mayor noted.
“We live in a world that’s different … kids are on social media, they’re involved in social media chats and meetups, and not all the activity is positive,” Bowser said. “We need to continue to think of ways to engage young people and give them the positive attention and feedback that they think they’re seeking.”
Boosting local funding as federal support for education wavers
The mayor’s visit, alongside DC public school chancellor Lewis Ferebee, comes as Bowser is calling for increased funding for education in the upcoming budget for 2026, currently under review by the DC Council.
Social services were also cut back in that budget, dubbed a “growth agenda,” but the council reversed most of those with recent revisions.
Bowser aims to send $2.9 billion in city funding to public schools — a $123 million increase from 2025’s budget. There’s also $270 million set aside for pay raises and $10.7 million to modernize technology in schools.
Priorities under the Trump administration at the national level are much different. The Department of Education has cut half of its staff and is withholding almost $7 billion in grants for school districts.
Harris, the STEM teacher, stressed the need to keep funding initiatives like the enrichment program. The equipment has been used several times, but there are other costs including breakfast and lunch for the kids, and transportation for weekly field trips.
She’s also struggling to get funding for new tables for her classroom for the upcoming school year, she said.
“I know money is tight,” Harris said. “But figuring out ways that we’re still able to have kids be able to have these experiences and make these connections I think [is] really important.”
And the students love it
Sasha, Laila’s 12-year-old sister who’s about to start 7th grade, wanted to be part of the summer program because she believes it’ll help her in other classes during the school year.
She’s had fun with the coding aspect of the class, and programmed her robot to make a “ta-da” sound when another bot hits her bumper.
Harris, a teacher of 21 years, is preparing the kids for a round of “Robot Olympics” this week, where students will play freeze tag and do relay races with their mobile machines, she said. The class is also gearing up for their next field trip, to the National Air and Space Museum.
Students keep journals to write down thoughts and ideas, but there’s no homework or grades to take the pressure off students, Harris explained.
The program runs four days a week. Time is evenly split between the robotics lesson and the “mini-medics” class, and lessons wrap up at noon.
The goal is to make an early introduction of what careers look like, so kids don’t waste their time pursuing a career they won’t like.
“The cool thing is, you can also make 50 choices between now and then, and they can all change and move and shake,” Harris said. “But I think that the idea of getting to start to think about it now helps you to figure out what you want to do later.”
