The honest answer is: more than we expected. The students walked out of the program able to wire a circuit, sketch pseudocode, identify the parts inside a remote control and explain (loudly, proudly) what a microcontroller does. But the impact we feel most is the one that's hardest to put on a slide — a class of 30 students who now look at technology as something they can build, not just consume.
LO2
Undertake challenges that develop new skills
Teaching robotics, circuits and programming to students with very little prior exposure forced us to do things we'd never done before. We had to simplify concepts we'd internalised so deeply we'd forgotten they were hard. We had to navigate language barriers in real time, switching between English and Hindi on the fly. We had to think on our feet when a demo refused to work in front of thirty staring faces. By the end, our communication, problem-solving and creative-thinking muscles were a different shape entirely.
LO3
Discuss, evaluate, and plan student-initiated activities
Every part of this — the sessions, the lesson content, the activities, the demos, the assessment, the final project structure — was planned by us, from scratch, without a curriculum to lean on. After each session we sat down and ran a proper retro: what landed, what flopped, where the energy dipped. Then we adjusted. By session 6 we'd rebuilt our teaching style around what the students actually responded to, not what we'd assumed they would.
LO5
Work collaboratively with others
Three of us, one project, and a clear understanding from day one that we'd play to our strengths. We split lesson prep, demo-building and on-the-ground teaching based on who was best at what — and we backstopped each other in every single session. We also collaborated closely with the school's teachers and principal, who gave us context, classroom support and trust. And we baked collaboration into the curriculum itself: students worked in small teams every session, and built their final projects in groups.
LO6
Develop international-mindedness through global engagement, multilingualism and intercultural understanding
This project pulled us into a part of our own city we hadn't really engaged with before, and made us reckon with the very different starting points students have based purely on which school they happen to attend. Teaching bilingually, adapting examples to what students actually have at home, and listening more than talking — those habits made us better, more empathetic, more globally-minded versions of ourselves. The world is bigger than the bubble we grew up in, and now we know it in our bones.