Meet our next Teacher Appreciation Week honoree for 2024: Ms. Leslie Llamas from El Paso, Texas! Ms. Llamas mentors FTC Team #24726: LPI Lions, who just completed their rookie season. 

How has your nominee promoted STEM within their community?

Ms. Llamas uses robotics and fundamentals of computer science to promote STEM throughout the school year with very cool projects. These projects, suited for 8th through 12th graders, involve coding techniques and teach us technical skills with hands-on activities. 

Ms. Llamas is always looking for activities and workshops around the city to supplement the knowledge acquired from her class lectures. During Segundo Barrio Day, our teacher held small competitions involving LEGO and the construction of robots to compete, or make cars for races. She gave us the opportunity to serve our community and acknowledge their support.

How has your nominee promoted FIRST within their community?

Since day one, our coach was in charge of promoting our robotics team and getting involved. She created posters highlighting the core values of FIRST and all the fun competitions our team participated in throughout the season. At the same time, our coach was always looking forward to promoting FIRST LEGO League and FIRST Tech Challenge for other middle schoolers and high schoolers. 

At the Segundo Barrio event for the community, we were in charge of sharing our team experiences to recruit more interest for next season. Robotics was a unique experience for our school and for our team. Since the beginning, we have felt like we experienced something new and incredible. We had the opportunity to understand what it feels like to be an engineer for a day.

What else would you like us to know about your nominee?

Ms. Llamas is the most kind, compassionate, and hardworking teacher I have ever had. The passion that she has for robotics made us love this club. She built a small family among us. It is amazing to hear her experiences from being a high school robotics member, to becoming a mentor and now a coach.. She is so inspiring and extremely proud of whatever we do. She is our best example that hard work always pays off, and we are so happy that she is our coach.

We would like to thank Itzel R. for sharing Ms. Llamas' story with the REV community!