Anette Varghese Student Life Editor

STUDENT LIFE THE SIDEKICK

Anette Varghese

Student Life Editor

@AnetteVarghese

Having a dual cultural identity is something many Coppell High School students and staff can connect with, including CHS Spanish teacher Eligio Mares. As the youngest of four siblings and one of the younger two born on U.S. soil, Mares had trouble finding his Mexican heritage represented in his education growing up in Decatur, TX,which is why he aims to bring his students a more holistic view on both culture and education. Mares was selected by The Sidekick staff as its Teacher of the Issue.

The Sidekick on Mares

“Señor Mares teaches with an emphasis on catering to a student’s preferred learning method, whether that be visual, auditory, tactile or writing.” - Staff photographer Sruthi Lingam

“Señor Mares makes his classroom more than a classroom. It is a learning ground where conversation is encouraged and laughing is pervasive. Señor Mares breaks all norms of a typical classroom, encouraging students to think about what they learn.” - Staff writer Anushree De

“He has a great attitude when working with students.” - Staff designer Josh Campbell

Why did you choose to teach Spanish?

I wanted to study psychology. I knew that you had to declare two degrees, a major and then a minor. I was very fortunate that my Midwestern State University advisor, Dr. Cuevas said, “ I think you should do Spanish,” because as she said, my informal casual Spanish was not going to be good enough for the professional world if I were to become a psychologist, or whatever I wanted to become. It was the greatest thing that I had ever done because it allowed me to be connected, not just on the language level, but on my parents’ cultural level.

How do you think being born in the United States affected your perception of your culture?

Technically, my culture would be American because I was born here. How much of Mexican culture I actually want to embrace was a challenge because as a minority, there was an inferiority complex and my culture was viewed as a marginalized culture. Majoring in Spanish at the college level, being a more mature adult with more exposure to the world and knowing how important it is to embrace your roots really helped me again evolve as a person. I felt like I became a better student overall by embracing the Spanish side.

How has teaching changed you?

It gives me just more awareness of all the different areas and cultures and I always tell my students that one of my goals in life was to be well exposed to the world, be well versed, and well cultured. One of the reasons that I came to Coppell is that I felt like I didn’t have to go to the world, the world came to me because there are so many different ethnicities and backgrounds here. I’m intrigued by that. It helps me evolve as a person, being here as a teacher in high school.

Why did you move to Coppell?

I always heard about how wonderful [fellow teachers] kids’ experience was in high school and how I didn’t realize they had been so diverse and basically a melting pot here. I was deeply intrigued by that. So, when I wanted to move from elementary to secondary, I took the job in the middle of the school year because the position I wanted opened up. I jumped on it when it came open, four years ago, in the month of February.

What is the funniest mistake a student has made?

False cognates, embarazado means for a woman to be pregnant, but they think it means embarrassed. That’s a common mistake. But it’s hard not to chuckle sometimes because of the completely different meaning that it has. It just kind of becomes kind of funny.

What sets you apart from other teachers?

I have had the opportunity to teach such a large range of different learning levels and backgrounds. When I was teaching elementary school students, I was working at Title I schools, which tended to be low-income families now I’m on the opposite Coppell High School Spanish teacher Eligio Mares assists CHS sophomore Roma Jani during first period on March 9. Mares has been selected as The Sidekick’s Issue 5 Teacher of the Issue for the 2021-22 school year. Nick Larry end of that spectrum. Sometimes, I’ll do an activity that’s either hands-on or a foldable with a paper, and I had my mentor teacher that first year say, “how do you come up with this kind of stuff?”

How does this school year compare to your first year at Coppell?

I understand the curriculum on a much deeper level. One of the things that I wanted to focus on this year was positive reinforcement. The service industry had taken such a big hit and there was a shortage of people helping with hotels, restaurants and anything in the service industry. I felt like in general people were very short with you just because they were struggling to stay afloat. I put that into perspective with students and what they’re going through at school. This year, I feel like in that sense of seeing the best response from students to be more motivated by using positive reinforcement. Early on, being in an AP classroom, I thought that I had to constantly challenge them. I wanted to meet somewhere in the middle and just use positive reinforcement to make sure students actually love learning Spanish. How does your background influence your teaching? Doing a Spanish degree gave me that foundation of where my parents come from, why they had to immigrate to the United States, what it entailed to have to try to assimilate to the majority culture over here.

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Hitting the mark

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t.EE Robotics team leveling sights on victory II

Saniya Koppikar

Staff Writer

@SaniyaKoppikar

Behind the red door of a red brick house that shielded them from the burning September heat, 12 teenagers huddled around a computer discussing the mechanics of a shipping hub.

The 12 constitute the Mark X robotics team, started by brothers Aryan and Arnav Damle––one a current freshman at University of North Texas, the other a junior at Coppell High School––and CHS junior Adarsh Goura. That September day, they were studying the prompt presented by the 2021 FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC): the future of transportation.

“When FIRST releases the challenge, we have to design a new robot from scratch,” said Arnav, builder and lead computer-aided design (CAD) designer. “We use software to put the parts together virtually and essentially create a set of instructions to build it in real life.”

According to the FIRST website, competing teams in the 2021-22 season must “re-imagine faster, more reliable, inclusive and sustainable transportation innovations that better connect and grow communities and economies around the world.”

For Mark X, FTC team #16272, the challenge took shape in weekly meetings at their coach Hema Damle’s house, where the team would brainstorm their path forward.

The months-long season ahead would lead Mark X through a series of competitions, each one divided into two events: the robot game and the judging presentation.

The robot game takes place in a span of only two and a half minutes. In the first 30 seconds, the robot performs only with the code the team has written, without any manual interference, and attempts to grab and queue up cubes and spheres in three different levels of containers. In the next minute and a half––the TeleOp period––the robot performs entirely with manual instruction. In the final 30 seconds––the endComputer-aided design...

• Represents the 3-D object digitally prior to manufacturing • Visualizes intricate part relationships • Also can be used to design infrastructure and digital spaces • Developed basis in the 1960s with the

Sketchpad and ADAM programs designed by Patrick Hanratty and Ivan Sutherland

game period––the driver controls the robot in an attempt to score the most points.

The 15-minute judging presentation concludes the competitions by giving teams a chance to show off what they have accomplished throughout the season, including community outreach displayed through an engineering portfolio, a 16-page document explaining the team’s building and programming journey throughout the season. The team presents for five minutes and answers questions from the judges for their remaining time. But before the team could advance to competition, the robot had to be built. Over the next few weeks, they transferred the The Mark X robotics team stands with its coach Hema Damle, mentor Aryan Damle and past robots on Feb. 13. The Mark X robotics team competed at the North Texas Regional Championship on Feb. 26 and placed 16 out of 40. Shreya Ravi plans into Fusion 360, a CAD software, to virtually plan how the parts of the robot would move together. Then, the parts were ordered and the building process began.

“The team started with only three members,” said Goura, who is lead programmer of Mark X. “Arnav and Aryan were doing fundraising around the neighborhood, going door to door selling cookies, and they ran into me. I’ve always loved STEM, but I wasn’t even in robotics at the time. It sounded super interesting. Now we have this funny saying that they traded a cookie for me.”

With nine more members joining since the team’s inception, including the third Damle sibling, Reyna, the team has been able to expand creatively and bounce ideas off of each other.

Towards the end of 2021, Mark X would begin to compete at league meets where they were ranked out of 20 teams. Each meet, the team had to redesign or present a new robot.

The final league meet took place on Jan. 15, where Mark X competed against 23 teams and secured their spot in the regional championship taking place on Feb. 26 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas. After a season of hard work and dedication, the team was able to cinch the sixth of eight spots in the meet. Along with Goura’s hosting of programming classes for Bhutanese refugees in North Texas, Mark X hosted a food drive in support of the refugees after winter storms Yuri and Viola in 2021, as well as one for those unemployed due to the pandemic. CHS sophomore Vina Banthia, Mark X’s website manager, mentors for FIRST Lego League (FLL), another competition hosted by FIRST. In her second year of competing in FTC after three years of competing in FLL, Banthia is teaching herself and working with her teammates and mentors to learn HTML, CSS and Java. “A huge goal of ours this year is to encourage other girls to join STEM,” Banthia said. “I’m so glad I joined. I never thought I would love it so much, but robotics has changed my life.”