“I told the kids, ‘I want you guys to explore different careers so you can find something that you're going to wake up excited about.’ I love what I do. And through that, I think through my passion, through my joy, I can teach kids to start opening their minds to discover careers that they're going to enjoy.” - Omar Cortez
Omar Cortez is an educator and robotics coach for the School for the Talented and Gifted in Pleasant Grove, located in the Dallas ISD. As one of the most passionate members of the RECF community and a true believer in the transformative power of STEM, Omar sat down with us to discuss why he believes every student should be exposed to robotics early, coaching his beloved Owlbots, the intersection of Hispanic culture and robotics, and his newly published book, Meshed Gears.
RECF
So, how did you end up teaching robotics? Are you an engineer by trade?
OMAR
Absolutely not. My wife introduced me to the world of robotics and VEX Robotics Competitions. At first I was doing robotics as an after school thing while I was a second grade math teacher, and what I was doing was nothing competitive. A previous teacher had left an old Lego set behind, and sometimes I would mess around with that. Then on my first date with my now wife - when she saw that I was doing extracurriculars with the robotics thing, she was like, you got to try VEX out. And so yeah, sure enough, fast forward and here we are.
RECF
That’s a great story! So are you and your wife from Dallas?
OMAR
I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas and my wife is from Dallas. I went to college at University of Texas El Paso, and then when I graduated I moved to Phoenix for a year and I was supposed to go to Vietnam after that. I had a job and a one-way flight, but my mother, she's a traditional Mexican mom. “No, you're not going.” And of course we still are very obedient with our moms! [Laughs] Eventually I was playing a game of Fortnite with a cousin, and he said ‘Man, I think you'd like Dallas. Come on out here.’ And sure enough I found a job relatively quick and that's how I ended up in Dallas - Fortnite.
It's funny because both of our parents are from the same town in Mexico - Juarez in Juarez Chihuahua. Total coincidence.
RECF
I noticed the Owlbots uniforms for this season appear to be Vaquero inspired. As someone with roots in Mexico, do you see an intersection between Mexican culture and robotics?
OMAR
It wasn’t intentional, but when I got to this campus, I realized the students were 90% Hispanic or Latin American. My students are mostly Mexican, but we have Salvadorians, Venezuelans, Guatemalans, and on our robotics team most of the kids are Mexican, but we have Salvadorians here as well. Every year I've taught at this school, I show the movie Spare Parts, and last year we read the novel. Oscar Vasquez, the main character in that story and novel, is located in the DFW area and I was able to get him over to our campus to talk to the kids.
It's interesting because again, I'm far from home, but I feel like I'm at home. Growing up in a border town, everybody is predominantly Hispanic also. And so growing up there and then coming over here and landing in a spot like this, I feel like I'm at home. And so it just all kind of came together and we really do make that connection.
RECF
Yeah, because we are an international program, that makes total sense.
OMAR
Right. I love the international aspect of the program and some of my favorite times ironically happened during the Pandemic, when we were doing virtual robotics and virtual tournaments. Thankfully, the REC Foundation had developed practice software where we could jump on with other teams anywhere around the world with only a webcam. We were practicing strategies with the Robo Titans out in Mexico and we'd all take virtual photos “together”. So as weird of a time as that was, where nothing was normal, robotics was our biggest sense of normalcy.
RECF
Robotics definitely brings people together. Why do you think robotics based programs are a good way to teach STEM concepts?
OMAR
I do game-based competitive learning and it really is amazing. So essentially if you build your class to be competition-based around robotics, it could be anything from stacking the tallest tower or to robot soccer, kids take a sense of pride in their work when they're doing that, right? And they always want to win. So kids collaborate, kids work together, and kids actually put in that effort.
RECF
It’s always wonderful to see that. Hopefully they’ll take some of that collaborative spirit with them.
OMAR
Exactly. One thing that I personally enjoy talking to my students about is their future. I usually hear the standard careers: “I want to be a doctor, be a lawyer, programmer, engineer” et cetera. But I told the kids, “I want you guys to explore different careers so you can find something that you're going to wake up excited about.” I tell them I wake up and I know that I get to work with the robotics team at some point, I get to teach you guys about drones, and I might even get to play with the robots a little bit myself. I love what I do. And so again, through that, through my passion, through my joy, I can teach kids to start opening up their minds to those careers that they're going to enjoy doing. And it’s happened! One of my robotics students from the Ladybots discovered that she wanted to be a NASA engineer through the VEX program.
RECF
And now you’ve found a new avenue for yourself in writing. I know you said that your book, Meshed Gears, took you a few starts and stops to finish.
OMAR
Yes. Well, the group of kids in the book were my first robotics students, and I grew really attached to them. They started the Owlbots and this one kid, when he left me, I just remember it was like a gut wrenching kind of thing. I didn't think that I would grow so close to these kids and the three years that they were in my class just flew by. He's in high school now. He's still competing in VEX robotics and they're doing really well. I just saw them at Worlds.
But Stefan and Fausto, those two kids really, it was one of those situations where students change your life. We spent a lot of time together in a world of unknowns, a world where nothing was normal, and the only sense of normalcy we had was robotics. We couldn't go anywhere, literally everything was in shutdown mode. There was nothing going on but robotics, and at that time, the kids had nothing else to do, so they were super excited. They had the buy-in and gosh, Estevan and Fausto were always the kind of kids that would show up early to practice, ask me if they could stay late, and I would say “I got nothing else to do, let's stay.”
RECF
That sounds really special and transformative.
OMAR
It was, and not just for me. In the book, I write about the way I saw Esteban change through robotics. Esteban was a shy, nervous kid and the pandemic didn't help. If you were introverted then, you were even more introverted after the Pandemic started. So when he came to me, he was a nervous wreck, but robotics gave him a voice and confidence - that was another huge thing that I saw firsthand. You always get kids that will leave you knowing how to interview, but his change was so drastic that I really felt like it had to be expressed.
You know, when you think about robotics, most people think engineering and programming, but people often overlook the alliance communication, the international alliance communication, the resilience that you need to build for the judged interviews, looking an adult in the eye, shaking a hand, being able to come up with interview questions on the fly. All those skills are really transferable to every single career. And that's all coming from that same robotics competition.
RECF
So I have to ask, will there be a follow up?
OMAR
Writing a book definitely took a lot of effort, so we’ll see. I struggled a lot, just like robotics isn't always these kids' strength, and they struggle at times, but I still found a way to do it myself. That’s a lesson that both my students and I took away from VEX Robotics competitions. You may not believe you can do it at first, but if you’re persistent, you’ll always find a way.
Omar’s book, Meshed Gears, is available now via Amazon.com.