Team Ironic at the
Florida Capitol
By Jayden Encarnacion
April 2nd, 2025
Recently, one of our team captains represented Team Ironic, and our school, Manatee School for the Arts, at the Inaugural Florida State Advocacy Conference and Florida STEM Day at the Capitol, hosted by the Student Association of STEM Advocacy. This event aimed to empower students to advocate and influence STEM education policies within their legislative government. Team Ironic specifically advocated for FIRST and STEM education in Florida.
FIRST promotes students to get involved with STEM throughout their primary and secondary education with multiple programs:
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FIRST Lego League introduces students to STEM and the engineering process through hands-on experiences with legos.
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FIRST Tech Challenge provides middle and high schoolers with a robotics challenge, in which they must design, build, and program a robot to complete a task.
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FIRST Robotics Competition is a more intense engineering challenge where high school teams design industrial-size robots for a more complex challenge.​
75% of all FIRST alumni go into the STEM field as a student or a professional, and 83% of FIRST Alumni have the confidence to take leadership roles. FIRST allows students to prepare for jobs of the future through internships with such companies as NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Google, 3M, RTX, Disney, and more! Lots of FIRST Alumni go into the workforce this way, our alumni have taken jobs in cybersecurity and AI computing through these programs.
STEM is a majorly growing industry in our local area, as Tampa Bay is making steps towards becoming a massive technological sector like Silicon Valley. Students should have opportunities to be involved in this movement and have more exposure to real-world applications of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Here at Team Ironic, we believe you should be supporting and investing in STEM education and initiatives, to empower the next generation of innovators, equip them with in-demand skills, and ensure they play an active role in shaping the future of our region.
Team Ironic believes all students, especially those in rural and urban areas like we have in our county, should have access to these awesome programs like us. Our team is one of the only FIRST Tech Challenge teams in our county, and we want to work with our community to provide more opportunities to students who want to participate in STEM. We hope that our efforts in advocating at the capitol can start to pave the way for more funding and support for STEM education across our local area, as well as on the state level. By sharing our experiences, we hope to inspire change and ensure that all students, no matter where they live, have the opportunity to explore and thrive in STEM.
Thank you to all of our sponsors! And a huge thank you to Homeschool STEAM Fest for sponsoring this trip.
