Wellstone International High School has a full schedule of community education programs that take place after school. At the end of March, their robotics team competed at the regional MN First Robotics competition at the University of Minnesota.
Led by Erik Linn-Molin, the team of five students worked for weeks constructing the robot after school at Wellstone. Despite a language barrier, they worked with other teams at the competition to tweak their designs, troubleshoot, and achieve the goals of the game.
Gloria Cazanacli, who oversees all of the Community Education programs at Wellstone, said she believes this is the first team made up entirely of recent immigrants to compete in a robotics competition of this kind in Minnesota.