Reeds Spring Intermediate is offering a new after-school program for its sixth-grade students.

The story from Ozarks First Reporters Jacob Blount and Emilee Kuschul:

The new robotics program teaches students everything they need to know to build robots for competition including coding, programming, and controlling robotics.

The program was added by the district at the request of the robotics team’s new instructor, Keith Kramer.

“In Omaha, Nebraska, I did robotics for about eleven years there in my last teaching job,” Kramer said. “Was able to retire. Come live at the lake, but I wasn’t ready to be done teaching. I just wanted to live at the lake.”

Kramer is hosting tryouts this week for his boys and girls robotics teams.

“In STEM, whether it’s programming or mechanical engineering or even just the gaming part of the remote control, there’s still a little bit of that’s more for the boys and it’s not,” said Kramer. “As a dad with two daughters, I never thought there was something they couldn’t do that boys can do.”

One of the sixth-grade students trying out is Trinity Gray.

“You get to work with things that seem like they’re from the future kind of, and then you’re also dealing with coding,” said Gray.