BOCES Robot Battle, Career Fair

BOCES Tech Center Hospitality Career Academy students (l-r) Kelly McKim of Mohegan, Rose Syso of Baldwin Place, and Veronica Estabaya of Mahopac demonstrate a proper restaurant table setting at the fair. Remote-controlled contraptions on wheels zoomed around construction cones, under tables, and around chairs on the Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES campus in Yorktown.

The occasion last Friday was the Battle of the Robots!

BOCES offered the after-school program for middle school children and ten boys and girls, aged 10, 11, and 12 met twice weekly to design and build their robots in preparation for the "battle."

The competition consisted of students steering their robotic creations through an obstacle course.

Josh Ashley, a young man from Mahopac, called the class "fun. Designing a robot was really cool."

Four hundred middle school children also converged on the BOCES campus Friday for a Career Fair.

Booths featured everything from cosmetology and arboriculture to law and fashion design.

BOCES Superintendent Dr. James Langlois said the fair afforded teens an opportunity to "learn what it takes to enter specialized fields of training."

Students visiting the fair came from the Brewster, Garrison, and Haldane School Districts in Putnam as well as Bedford and Byram Hills in Westchester.

The day featured many hands-on opportunities, including blood-pressure testing in the Health Cares area, television filming at the Visual Arts Center, and tasting of apple crepes courtesy of BOCES Culinary Tech students.