UpRising Academy uplifting youths through robotics, football

Recently, UpRising Academy, a mobile institution, held a two-day camp at Tarrant High School in St Andrew where students were engaged in robotics and Brazilian Futsol (indoor football), which is what Jamaicans call ‘scrimmage’. It was the second time such a camp was being held, and it was as successful as the first.

It’s the brainchild of Leighton Walters, a Jamaican chemical engineer who works in western Kazakhstan, and a group of “like-minded engineers”, such as Devon Ellis (chair of the board, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin), Charles Buchanan (based in Calgary, Alberta), Stuart Sutherland (based in Seattle, Washington), Kirk Kennedy, Daren Moore, Wayne Thompson (robotics), and Edison Leighton. Dr Margaret Brissett-Bolt, distinguished Jamaican educator and former principal of Holy Trinity High School, described as “a critical adviser”, is a key player from the very beginning.

Walters, who is an expatriate rotating sight manager, is also a licensed coach, who had an A Licence with the US Soccer Federation, and a lifetime B Licence. He said he is not a well-known footballer, but knows much about football, and has a wealth of coaching experiences, starting from the mid-1990s.

The UWI and Campion College alumnus is very familiar with the vagaries of the inner cities as he said his mother’s family is from the McGregor Gully, Jacques Road areas, where COVID-19 restrictions and all the things that come with them had brought the lives of many youngsters to a halt. So, when Walters was approached about the programme, he did not push back.

TARGET GROUP

The academy started last year May, and the first camp was held in July at Tarrant High School by Thompson, and some of the then participants were back this the second time around. “We are focusing on at-risk communities,” Walters, the director of operations at UpRising Academy, told The Gleaner. “We cannot cocoon them in the inner cities.”

Scrimmage, a popular pastime for inner-city youths, was brought indoors. It is the use of a ‘dead ball’ to help the participants develop their technical skills, and “increases their ability to get out of tight places” and situations, to improvise, and to solve problems. “That’s what Futsol do to them,” Walters declared. And, as a result of the coaching, he has seen where their ability to get out of situations and such tight spaces had “improved dramatically”.

While Walters coordinates the general operations of the programmes, Wayne Thompson runs the STEM section. It was his job to help the participants develop their problem-solving skills, sharpen their computational thinking, and to be innovative and hands-on. He said while students are taught the sciences, there is little or no practical application, and so they end up being one-dimensional.

“What I want to do is to complete the puzzle … so that they can feel like a scientist,” he explained. It is about bringing the reality of physics into the classroom. And, essential to the scheme of things is programming, which is impacting every aspect of life through robotics, artificial intelligence and coding.”

They are exposed to problem-solving in theory and application, with the focus on application, relevance-based, hands-on learning. Theses are core skills that are preparing them for the present and the future. On the first day they were introduced to robotics and programming. Day two was application and robotics tournament day, on which they applied the skills that they had learned on day one to real-world problems. Up to the point when The Gleaner spoke with Thompson, he said he was “encouraged” and “elated” with the positive feedback from the participants.

EXCEPTIONAL TALENTS

On the Futsol side, Devon Thompson, an experienced high-school football coach of over 20 years, is the man in charge. He said scrimmage, which has an element of fun, is used to pull them away from the negativities in their communities. Their situations were researched, exceptional talents were identified, and then they were pulled from their circumstances into the programme.

Follow-ups are done, and further evaluation of their basic skills is carried out during the camp, more of which he said is needed, especially in the downtown Kingston region to get a wider cross-section of youths involved. There is room for sustenance said the man who is the on-the-ground person. The participants, he said, had “taken on well”, and three youths with exceptional basic skills had been identified so far.

Khaden Robinson, a 12-year-old St Richard’s Primary School student, was involved in both aspects of the camp. He, who plays football for Kingston Football Academy, was at the first one, likes to code robots, but aspires to be an international professional footballer. Like Robinson, Akeelah Anderson, a grade-eight Immaculate Conception High School student, straddled both aspects of the camp. And they described the experience as “fun”. She, who likes computers, wants to pursue the sciences professionally. She also said she found the camp “very interesting”, and that she had “learned a lot”.