More than 100 middle school girls representing nine schools competed in a CIJE Vex Robotics Tournament on Tuesday, May 2, at the Brightstone Hall in Passaic.

Vex Robotics is an international company that designs robotics competitions for students all over the world. With a different game for each division (elementary school, middle school and high school) every year, Vex is the standard in robotics competitions, a rapidly growing area of STEAM activities in schools across the globe.

Due to most Vex tournaments being held over weekends (and therefore over Shabbat), competing is an issue in the Jewish community. That’s where the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE) steps in to make amazing events like this one possible.

Created in 2001, CIJE coordinates educational programs in more than 175 Jewish schools across the country. Those programs impact the learning of more than 45,000 students each year and focus on both the ever-relevant (collaborating in teams, developing critical thinking skills and finding solutions) and the futuristic (the STEAM component). According to the organization, the goal is to prepare the next generation for innovation by funding programs with advanced technology, developing engaging curricula and providing ongoing teacher training, mentorship and school visits by engineers.

CIJE invited schools from all over New Jersey (Passaic, Piscataway, Cherry Hill, Long Branch, Elizabeth) to compete at this event alongside teams from Queens, Baltimore, and Boston. CIJE also supplies the schools with the materials to build the games as per the specifications that Vex sends out. This allows the schools to have a playing field for the students to practice on that they have access to during the year.

The first robotics tournament exclusively for middle school girls was hosted by Bet Yaakov of the Jersey Shore (Long Branch). After that initial success, with three schools in a fairly local radius, the tournament expanded greatly this year and looks to grow even more in the future.

The CIJE Robotics League challenges students to work in teams throughout the school year to build robots that compete in multi-school tournaments, culminating at events like this one. Students learn advanced programming, mechanical building, teamwork, and problem-solving through the process of building their robots and competing.

The middle school division had a cooperative format where two teams competed with each other and both received whatever score they were able to accomplish together. This approach really highlighted teamwork, since not only did the teams have to cooperate to build a robot before the event, they had to work alongside a random team in each round to score as many points as possible.

Many schools brought multiple teams and the hall was often filled with loud cheers when teams scored high or advanced to the playoffs at the end of the day.

The playoffs featured the 16 teams with the highest average scores from the preliminary rounds. The most impressive performance was by Bais Yaakov of Baltimore, who brought eight teams to the tournament (the most of any school), and had all eight teams make the playoffs. Also achieving playoffs status were four out of the five teams from the host school, YBH Passaic, Girls Division.

One of the highlights of the tournament was the performance of Kayla Rosenfeld (eighth grade, YBH). While most teams are made up of anywhere from 2-5 people, Kayla was a squad of one and managed to finish in third place. “It took a lot of trial and error to perfect my robot,” Rosenfeld said with a smile. “But it was worth staying every Monday after school.”

After only joining the robotics program this year, she may have competed on her own, but the nature of the competition still gave her a dose of teamwork. “It’s challenging to cooperate with a new team every round, but that’s part of the fun of the event,” said Rosenfeld as she held her trophy.

The aspect of having teams compete together and not against each other is certainly a focus of the program.

“Competitive sports create teamwork, but in robotics, a team creates one competitive robot,” said Orly Nadler, CIJE’s director of innovation. “This rich experience that fuses mechanics, coding and design has been much more widely experienced by Jewish day schools due to the CIJE Robotics league. We are seeing wide embrace and enthusiasm for robotics from schools across the religious spectrum in Jewish day schools.”

With STEM options increasing in schools everywhere, CIJE’s role to help facilitate corresponding growth in Jewish day schools is greater than ever. Their goal is to be there for whatever is next for the future in STEM education and events like these demonstrate how happy the students are that CIJE is there to help them expand their educational horizons.

1st      Bais Yaakov of Baltimore (MD)

Bais Yaakov of Baltimore (MD)

2nd   Bais Yaakov of Baltimore (MD)

Torah Academy of Boston (MA)

3rd    YBH Passaic – Girls Division (NJ)

Yeshiva Shaarei Tzion Girls School

of Piscataway (NJ)

Nati Burnside is a freelance writer living in Fair Lawn and is a man of many interests. He can be reached at [email protected].