Texas City 4th graders bring GIRL POWER to robotics

TEXAS CITY, Texas -- They may only be fourth graders, but these girls are already dreaming big for the future.

The students are part of the all-girls "Robo Girls" and mixed "Mechanical Brainiacs" robotics teams at Roosevelt-Wilson Elementary in Texas City, Texas.

The program started in May 2018, with the hope of teaching STEM at an early age so students could build more advanced projects by the time they reached the high school robotics team level.

The fourth graders only have a year to learn everything they can and in 2020, the teams won multiple design and excellence awards. The students were on track to go to the world championships, but the tournament was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The girls were disappointed, but say they've fallen in love with robotics and science.

Many hope to grow up to be engineers or work at NASA.

Team coach Ricci Rodgers said, "I tell every one of my students they're world changers."