ROYAL CITY — The Mayan Memers, made up of fourth through sixth graders, won second place for core values – sportsmanship, teamwork and things like that – at the regional competition, then won at state for their innovation project. The students designed a self-sufficient modular research station equipped with LIDAR drones so local indigenous people in the Mexican and Guatemalan jungle can lead the research into their own history 

“They built a Lego model of what the research station would look like,” said advisor Polly Carlson, who teaches the Highly Capable classes at RIS. “There's a building and then they've got some solar panels on a tower, so they'll be above the trees, and a backup generator.” 

The students spoke with about 10 different experts to fine-tune their solutions, Carlson said. 

“They talked to someone who lives here in Royal who built a greenhouse in Haiti,” she said. “He came and talked to them about challenges building buildings in third-world countries. And we talked to someone from the state Department of Natural Resources. They have some LIDAR experts (who) did a Google meet with the kids. So people have just been really generous with their time, being willing to talk to the kids.” 

RIS had two other teams that competed at the regional level but didn’t advance on to state, Carlson wrote in an email to the Columbia Basin Herald. The Talking Trees won the Innovation Award at regionals for their project about an app to share the voices of Native American and other stakeholders for important historical and archaeological sites, and the Majestic Munching Moles designed a device to dispense mint oil to deter burrowing pests at archaeological dig sites. 

Because she runs the district’s gifted program, Carlson has known some of the children since they were in first grade, she said.  

“It's really fun to see them grow up, start as like these tiny, quiet little kids and then find their voice and find what their interests are,” she said. 

Many of her students have older siblings on Piper’s team, who help her students with their projects, she said. 

“(Polly) does the hard work for me,” Piper said. “She teaches them when they're younger, so they come up to me often knowing a lot of the framework of what the expectation is (and) we get to fine-tune it.” 

    A Royal Intermediate School student shows the Mayan Memers’ innovation project, a modular research station for archaeologists to use in remote areas of Mexico and Guatemala.