How much does your school's general population care about your team?

[fireyoshi]

I've been thinking about this question ever since a talk with one of the judges at Atlanta.

Our principal encouraged all the teachers to show their students the Championships webcast. After every match, every team member's cell phone (including mine) was full of text messages either congratulating us or telling us not to be discouraged. Our principal called our mentor telling him how proud he was for bringing such a program to the school. When we got back home after the championships, we were bombarded with students asking us questions about the trip, asking us how we built the robot, and of course the stereotypical battlebots questions. There is a massive amount of students wanting to join next year's team.

We talked to one of the judges about how much the school's administration and the students are supportive of us, and his answer shocked me. He told us that until recently, his school's principal didn't even know there was a robotics program. Students came back home after competitions like as if nothing happened. This saddens me. :(

So, as the thread title states, how much does YOUR school's population care about your team?

[ThaineP]

Veeeeery little.

We have a tiny corner in the back of a room shared by two other groups behind two locked doors that we don't have keys to, in a library run by a cranky lady that complains about us going on CD on the computers when waiting for our captain. Also, since it's a library, we can't do anything at all during free periods because a drill moving at low speed behind three walls 'might disturb the students.' Plus, we can't move the robot or be seen with tools or even safety glasses until about an hour and a half after school closes because the people working the library don't like that, and why I can't imagine.

<only slightly exaggerated>

Anyway, it's pretty annoying. Any ideas about what to do?


Thaine

[ChristopherSD]

I'm sure that a quarter of the students probably don't even know the team exists. We do have a couple of Facebook pages or groups, and I have noticed that some people who aren't on the team have "become a fan", but it can easily be said that they don't care.

[kstl99]

Show off your robot! I bet most students don't have a clue what we do. It seams the more they see the more interested they get. Show it to teachers and administration. This year's robot should be easy to show off.

[JABot67]

At my school, Milford High, the HOT Team does get a lot of recognition. We make sure the student body knows about us by making them sit through long videos on the announcements about who we are and what we do. A lot of us like to wear HOT gear to school. The teachers often congratulate us after we get back from a competition, and my friends at school often ask me how we did and things like that. With our robotics team being our school's most successful team, there are a lot of new people that want to join every year, but are unwilling to do the 25 hours of team-sponsored events - road cleanups, river cleanups, FLL competitions, a triathlon, and much more - required to be on the team roster for Atlanta.

When we nominated Lori Gleason for the Michigan FIRST Teacher of the Year award, several of our computer teachers had their entire classes vote for Mrs. Gleason online for several days. This coordinated voting gave Mrs. Gleason three times as many votes as any other contestant for Teacher of the Year.

So I'd say our school's general population cares somewhat about our team. Not as much as football, or most sports anyway. But in general, they don't know what we do, but they know that we exist and that we are good.

[IzzieB]

At our school, it hasn't been until very recently (last year) that we've started getting much recognition. I joined as a sophomore, since I didn't know we had a team my freshman year. I'm hoping that this year we can get more face out there by working with the video announcements and demonstrating at the rallies. I think when people actually see the robot in action, they think it's pretty neat. :)

[Dhananjay T.]

In terms of material support, we're luckier than most teams to have our own room, (Used as a room during to teach an engineering class by one of our mentors). We're granted access to our gymnasium every year to hold a successful off season event, and also granted access ,should we need it, to a secondary gym during build season for some space to drive our robot.

Considering we're more successful than most athletic programs coming out of the school, we don't get much moral support from the school itself. Many students don't realize what we do, and just assume we're the nerds hanging out after school. Once in a while, kids see us driving our robots to stop and stare in awe. In terms of official recognition, we're invited once a year to a Board meeting of our township's board of education, to be recognized by the superintendent etc.

Its great to know that teams are being recognized on their own ground for what they do. Coming home to congratulatory P.A. announcements, and billboard shout-outs is great, but texts from students and calls from the principal sound even better :D

[maverickfan138]

People know that our schools have a robotics team, but that's all they know. The majority of students at our schools think we lock our selves in a closet and bolt metal together for no reason.

We work in a classroom in the back corner of the school and we only get to use about a third of the room. If we want to drive a robot, we have to beg to use the cafeteria. Our school is currently in the process of being redone for the 50th anniversary next year, but due to the economy, it won't be complete. Part of this remodel involved redoing the science wing, which would have included more science labs, a computer lab, engineering and architecture rooms, and a robotics room with access to the cafeteria. This was all supposed to be completed for this past year, but it didn't happen. Our school has now split this wing into three phases over the next three years. The last one is the robotics room.

We are looking into having an assembly, or at least be part of a pep rally where we have our robot shoot some penalty kicks(with multiple balls of course) against our state champion soccer team's goalie. I've heard that a few years ago, the team was able to do this with our Aim High bot and we shot some balls into the basketball hoop and everybody loved it. Hopefully we can do that again.

[angelawence11]

Hardly at all.
We're trying to get our school and community much more involved in robotics, but its very difficult. The school does not announce our victories, but does announce things like "Our schools robotics team place 22 in the Connecticut Regional!" or whatever we had placed. We used to have banners hung in the main office, but they were taken down this year.

However, we will be talking with the school again soon. We deserve to have our team recognized. Plus, isnt that what FIRST is all about? getting everybody around you involved and interested in Science and Technology?! :D

[MagiChau]

I would say Team 85 have very little general population support. This off-season it is going to change. We are trying to be more active than we ever had before to spread the word of FIRST.

We have to convince the principals and teachers (Don't ask why we build two seperate high schools then call them seperate schools even though people go between the two building.)

We have to convince the students. It is a true stereotype that people think they must have some talent or knowledge to be involved in the robotics team. This year a lot of seniors approached the seniors in the team and said, "If we knew earlier about what you guys do then we would've joined."

Sorry that just turned into a rant after I got a shot of FIRST overdose.

Anyways yeah team BOB is working on getting the students to notice our team.

I would say we have good background support though. We get our own area in the school's metal shop to store our FIRST robotics related items. We have the support of a few teachers. We talk to the school board every year about our team is about. We are allowed to host a FLL competition at one of the high schools. The teacher in charge of a computer lab allows us to use the room in the 1st week for designing the robot and examing the FIRST manual on the computers.

Thaine though this is obvious, use every method you can to garner support and recognization from your community. I know this will be hard but if we don't put in a lot of effort we won't ever be like HOT. For the "disturbance" maybe create a petition or something showing that students don't mind that the school's robotics team is working on their robot? I am unsure for it is getting late and I should go to sleep.

[BX HANNAH]

First off-it is WONDERFUL that you guys have that much support! I am soooooo happy for your team and proud of your school/student body for realizing how awesome this program is! :D

For 1023:
Our principal is very supportive of 1023. This year we got an old science storage room to use for our robotics team storage room. We also receive varsity letters, get a page in the yearbook, story in the newspaper, pictures on the school website, time in the pep rallies and announcements. Our school also allows us to use the CAD room and machine shop for our meetings and is one of our biggest financial sponsors. So we are VERY thankful for that, the principal before this one didn't really know about the team it seemed like.

However, the student body is not very supportive at all. We won our Detroit District event, came back to school and with the exception of very close friends and only 2 of my teachers, congratulated me on the team's win even though it had been announced. I'd say maybe 60% of the high school knows there's a robotics team, even though we are always wearing team shirts and doing the above activities. Of the 60% about 10% actually know what we are doing (the 6-week build season, different parts of the team, the competition, etc) the others have no idea and leave it up to their imagination. We are really trying to change this, we're trying to mount another recruitment campaign as well as have presentations to explain what the robotics team is to anyone that wants to come. There is no commitment requirement for this meeting, if they have no interest and just want to understand why they lose their friend for 6 weeks, they're welcomed and encouraged to attend this meeting. We are going to continue and get more announcements made, flyers put up, and other ways to get our team noticed, but it is very hard. Our team has been around since 2003 and we still only have this much support.

To everyone out there trying to get support-keep trying! it'll come! I know we've made HUGE steps in the last 2 years, we have a long way to go, but we've come far. so keep trying!

[kstl99]

I think my favorite thing about FIRST is the opportunities it gives students, to see what it takes to accomplish goals, to be a part of a team accomplishing those goals, to check out many possible future occupations and decide if they interest you, to have fun, I could go on and on. One of the saddest things I hear is "I would have joined sooner if I had known there was a team".

We can do our best to spread the word that FIRST is about more than just the competition. Hopefully more students will notice its value, and want to join or at least understand and respect those that do.

[JesseK]

We had similar student support after our 2006 Rookie All-Star awards. Since then it's died down a bit in the student population, but the administration and county has slightly increased support (in the form of approving us to go places). After our rookie year, each year we have had about 5% of the school population apply (~100 kids out of 2000) for the team, and we accept as many as money or mentorship can handle.

[Radical Pi]

Wow. I just had a conversation with a few "average" people in my school, and it got to our robotics team. This is pretty much what they said:

"Code Red? That's just a club. There's no real experience you gain from it. It's just a bunch of college students coming in to build a robot for you, right?"

I think we need to work on our publicizing a bit more...

[Karibou]

The administration at my school (we feed from the two high schools in the district) is supportive of us, but they don't promote us very much. They let us have what we want (showcase, more space in the shop, and letting us out of class to collect school supplies), but that's about the extent of their support. All of my teachers usually ask me how competitions go when we get back, but that's about where it ends.

After putting up a huge display in the most-visible showcase at the end of last year, I'm sure that the students at one of our two schools know who we are, but that's about the extent of their support. We're working on changing that and getting our name out there :/ It's very hard to coordinate awareness - and things such as bake sales - when your students are unequally spread out between two schools.

[Wildcat]

@ my schools our robotics team is recognized by everyone once per year-when we show our 1 ad on the announcements in attempt to recruit members. They recognize all of the other team and club accomplishments except robotics at my school. Its especially bothersome since within the past 2 years my team has been the best in its entire history

[Karibou]

@ my schools our robotics team is recognized by everyone once per year-when we show our 1 ad on the announcements in attempt to recruit members. They recognize all of the other team and club accomplishments except robotics at my school. Its especially bothersome since within the past 2 years my team has been the best in its entire history
Our school is similar, but different. Our sports teams are usually great - and they get TONS of recognition. Clubs only get small mentions on the daily video announcements that nobody really pays attention to. Our Quiz Bowl team won the state championship two weekends ago, but does anyone but them and their close friends know? No (I'd post a link to our school paper's editorial on this topic, but it's not online yet). It's a common problem :/

[fuzzy1718]

everyone in our school knows about the robotics team, especially since about 15% are on the team... the school has a total of 200 ish kids. Due to the small size the whole school meets almost every wendsday and each club gets to talk for a quick sec... but most don't care. All seven teachers do, but few kids do.

[Brian C]

It's absolutely great that your school supports the program as much as they do.

Unfortunately from my experience support like yours is the exception, not the rule. I mentor 2 teams and while both school districts support the program in that they budget for the entry fees each year. They don't really take advantage of the program. In fact, one of the schools seems to try their best to hinder the program as much as they can.

Oh well, **sigh** I can remember working with the now defunct team #311 back in 2002 and being Finalists on Einstein at EPCOT. The team came back to school the Monday after championships and were congratulated during the morning announcements for being championship finalists in the "FIRST AEROBICS Competition" :eek:

[Steven Sigley]

When we were at competition in Washington D.C. we got texts from students in class who were watching us on the webcast. Some teachers had set up the webcast on Friday and let their students watch all the action.. Also got some recognition when we returned from those students who got to see it.

A lot of kids are fascinated by it, and some of the seniors I talked with regret not getting into it.

It's hard for our robotics class, because we've started to get so many requests to join that we have to deny some kids each year. (Of course those that are dedicated will still come, but not all)

[onecoolc]

Support? Recognition? That's a joke, right?

Our team's coach is also the Robotics teacher at our high school, so during build season he gives us the shop and tells us to just put the important stuff in a closet during the day (so the P.E.T. class won't get to it). But from the rest of the faculty? The principal? No.

The general population of our school doesn't know the team exists. Those who do assume it's that nerdy thing some of the geeks do after school. They don't understand or care about the scope of FIRST. The school doesn't announce our wins or our game times like the rest of the school sports. A few teachers know about us and think it's a "cool idea", and all of the technology teachers are in on it with their support (and use the tech classes as a pool to draw new members from), but they don't tell their general students about it.

And our coach has a really hard time getting the days off to go to competition. (I've heard Robotics isn't being counted as a school-excused absence for students, but I'm not sure about that one.)

HOWEVER,
Our coach is one of the most amazing people in the world, ever. He has some how convinced the school to let our Robotics team members get a Varsity Letter in the sport. The requirements probably sounded absurd the the faculty, but they're not that bad. (150 hours of team time, 15 hours volunteer time, go to at least one regional, mentor a FLL team) And our coach has also made a deal with another one of the Tech teachers who is also a soccer coach. If Michelangelo (our robot this year) can beat a varsity soccer player in a kick off at the end-of-the-year assembly, then Michelangelo gets a soccer varsity letter. Which is way cool.
(We love you Sal~ Thanks for helping us find support!)

[Phreadumb]

I have to say that over the four years our robotics team has been in business that we are getting more recognition little-by-little. Hey, just recently we've been able to get a showcase to put our awards in. Previous to that our accomplishments have always been but on announcements, some classmates and teachers ask us how we've done, we've participated in a local parade, and have done other school related events.

But not much of that has actually has sunk through the minds of many because .01% of the student population participates in robotics (6 of 600).

However, I propose an idea to generate recognition and get more students. Some of you have talked about others in school viewing your machines in shock and awe as they are demonstrated. Well, shock and awe does not work on high school aged students to get them interested in robotics (for the most part). For most of them, their high school dreams have already been set on being in some athletic team or another extracurricular activity. But why? Well, when these same people were of elementary school age, their minds were way more impressionable and viewed these activities in shock and awe, and it became their dream to make touchdowns and whatnot.
So, exposing robotics to the young students will inspire them to join your robotics team, and ultimately have them dream about becoming science and technology heros.

[MagiChau]

I have to say that over the four years our robotics team has been in business that we are getting more recognition little-by-little. Hey, just recently we've been able to get a showcase to put our awards in. Previous to that our accomplishments have always been but on announcements, some classmates and teachers ask us how we've done, we've participated in a local parade, and have done other school related events.

But not much of that has actually has sunk through the minds of many because .01% of the student population participates in robotics (6 of 600).

However, I propose an idea to generate recognition and get more students. Some of you have talked about others in school viewing your machines in shock and awe as they are demonstrated. Well, shock and awe does not work on high school aged students to get them interested in robotics (for the most part). For most of them, their high school dreams have already been set on being in some athletic team or another extracurricular activity. But why? Well, when these same people were of elementary school age, their minds were way more impressionable and viewed these activities in shock and awe, and it became their dream to make touchdowns and whatnot.
So, exposing robotics to the young students will inspire them to join your robotics team, and ultimately have them dream about becoming science and technology heros.
We don't have to get people to dream about science and technology. At the very least I want people to recognize and be inspired by science and technology. One way to do this is show how it this robotics team is fun to be in :ahh: People can have a sports dream and be in the robotics team since it happens every now and then.

It looks like you are off to a good start if you gain some recognition steadily. You could perhaps double your team repeatedly even if your attempts reach out to the other students :O

[Carolyn_Grace]

It's interesting how big the range of support is for individual teams.

As for the Killer Bees:

Because our shop is not located in the school, for a long time (back in 2000-2005ish) I don't think many people even really knew about our team. When I was a student, and was looking for a 2003 extracurricular activity to do, someone suggested the robotics team, and I had no clue what it is (and they had just come in second place at the Championship in Orlando in 2001!)

Now we're doing better to spread the word around the school. Some of the ways that we have done this are by:

Bringing the robot to math and science classes
Demonstrating at freshman orientation
Demonstrating at freshman cornroast
Participating in Pep rallies
Having a booth at the school's Open house
Providing fan buses to local cometition (FiM has greatly helped with this, by having district events that are located closer to the school)
Awarding a Varsity letter to students who have made a large contribution to the team
Wearing our bright yellow team shirts to some sports team's events, like a varsity basketball home game
Bringing the robot to show off at lunchtimes in the cafetorium
Winning awards at competitions. The school faculty especially enjoys receiving Chairman's trophies.
Writing letters to all faculty and administration inviting them to attend our closest event (we had two people show up)
Having two of our very own trophy cases in the main hallway of the school.
Updating a bulletin board, also located in the main hallway, in the school every season
Linking from the school's website directly to our team's website (killerbees33.com go check it out ;))


All this aside, we are still not as visible in the school as we want to be. There are still many students who think it's a geek club or too nerdy for them. And the administration at the school often tells our students that we should change our name to "The Fighting Irish" (as our school is Notre Dame Preparatory, The Fighting Irish), because they don't comprehend the real life marketing that has gone into our image as The Killer Bees.

Does anyone have any other suggestions to gather more school support?

[afowl]

I think our school recognizes us. I mean, we work out of an old guidance room right now (right next to the nurse's office) and our coach's classroom and we might not have the most space or the most resources from our school but we are definitely recognized by the staff, students and personnel. We're the kind of school where people go to football games for the marching band. Our sports teams just aren't that good and everyone in the area knows it. It isn't uncommon for the school athletes to congratulate us and ask about our team. Many of the members of 1089 are known for being in robotics by students, teachers, janitors, you name it, and everyone knows we have a team. Mr. Gregory, our coach, and the team members never stop talking about robotics and Mr. Gregory has shown the game animation in his classes and has been known to give extra credit for attending regionals and writing a paper on them.
We have our Chairman's banner hanging in our cafeteria where everyone can see it and we frequent the display cases in the main hallway. We get announcements when we get back from competition and all of our teachers know about the program one way or another. But we are everywhere in our school and our community, for example an Iron Man 2 robot demo yesterday and today, and we make sure you know about our team.

[KrazyCarl92]

Our team's school is a rather large school in upstate New York (about 700 per class) and we've been competing since 1992. We're a large team of about 65-75 kids each year, but I'd say barely a majority of the school is aware of our existence despite our size, success, and longevity. Every student other than the ones on the robotics team cares more about the football team or the basketball team. It does not help that our school's principal hates our team because we miss school, so we get very little recognition when we get awards or do well, simply a two sentence statement on the announcements for a week which really means nothing because nobody listens to them anyway. It's very hard to make teacher's or the rest of the school enthusiastic about the team when the administration dislikes us, making it even harder to get the community notice. We do our very best to be involved in the community, and we do team outreach activities regularly, at least on a monthly basis.

When I talked to other students from teams at the championships who had won regional chairman's awards, almost all but one of them out of around a dozen said that either their school actively supported them in a significant way or that they went to a math/science/technical school. Being the only original team still around to have never won a regional Chairman's award, it almost makes it feel like it is beyond our control. But in two weeks our team is presenting in front of the Board of Ed of our school district with our robot and were hoping to gain support from them. Any advice for the presentation and how to get better recognition from our school?

[AcesJames]

Our team is 2 schools, plus some kids from surrounding towns without their own teams. At the 2 schools our team is officially connected to (Suffield and Windsor Locks), we have about 30 and 10 members, respectively, off the top of my head. Our head mentor is a teacher at Windsor Locks, and that is where our shop is as well. We also have a trophy case there that holds all of our banners. At Suffield, we have another teacher mentor, and the display case outside his room holds our judges' awards and medals, with our 1999 championship banner in the gym. Also, our pre-ship scrimmage, the Suffield Shakedown, is held in Suffield's gymnasium.

The teachers and faculty at both schools know about our team, and one of the vice principles at Suffield often wears team shirts on Fridays. However, many of the students at both schools seem to look down upon and even make fun of the students in the robotics program. They don't really accept it as a sport, and they don't really understand the program either. Most obviously think it's similar to Battle Bots, and when they hear that it isn't, it just makes them think we're nerds playing with legos.

Even though a lot of students and teachers don't quite understand FRC, we still try to inform them about it. For example, at the beginning of the school year, we announce our meeting schedule over the morning announcements. During Freshmen orientation in February, we hold a demo for the 8th graders who are moving up to the high school. We often bring a robot and let the kids try it out, to see what FIRST is really like. Also, we have a morning announcements commercial for our scrimmage, where we encourage students and teachers to come see what we have been doing for the 6 week build season.

Regardless of all of the above, I (regretfully) have to admit, that our team really only gets a lot of attention when we win. When the school gets news that a team, any team, won something, they become interested in them, at least for a little while. After we won in Washington DC this season, we came back to an excited faculty and student body, and many congratulations. Students asked us about the team, rather than putting us down. However, this was all reversed when we didn't win in Connecticut. We were almost expected by the students to win a 2nd regional, just because we had already won a first. And just that in itself is disheartening, because that's not what FIRST is about.

So, overall, I would say that a lot of the student body at our schools really don't care much about us. However, I will say that the schools are supportive of what we do, and they are by no means working against us. I think that a lot of people just judge us, because they don't really know what we're all about.

[Vermeulen]

The student body in our schools don't recognize us at all. I've been involved with the team for 2 years, and the only time we've had an announcement about the team has been when we were quarterfinalists in Curie this year, completely ignoring when we won a regional Chairman's Award.

Our school district gives us a display case in a minor hallway, some space for summer camp when they aren't using it, free copies, and it covers legal fees in case we get sued, but it treats us more as a minor club than an organized team. Officially, our shop in the school cafeteria, so we have to find other, donated, build sites, which are usually hard to come by. Looking at what Drama, Debate and Forensics gets, we should at least get the same recognition as them, with recruiting announcements, and being able to post flyers on bulletin boards. The support in reaching students through teachers is minimal, with only one teacher, our lead mentor, doing any recruiting. Some of the things that our school district gives us are useful, like how they cover our

I can't stand the "Battlebots factor". People always think that it's something with fighting robots when I tell them about it, and give me advice on how I should put a shotgun, or a flamethrower on the robot. This has even happened with some potential sponsors! When we eventually tell the students what FIRST is all about, they almost always just assume that all this "Gracious Professionalism" and "Coopertition" business is only for nerds. It's sad, because I think that a lot of these students would really enjoy FIRST after seeing their first regional.


tl;dr Summary: Our team barely gets recognized by the school, most teachers and students don't care at all, and older school clubs get the spotlight.

[dag0620]

In turns of Student Support/Awarness with the student body.... We could be better.

But in terms of faculty recigniton, great. Out team gets lucrative funding from out B.O.E., and has the administration completly behind us.

With the cut of our schools Metal Shop Room, Team Max now has our own work room. We also are the only team/club that has COMPLETE ACESS TO THE ENITRE BULDING. This means that as long as a room is not getting used, we can use it without question. This is has basically taken off all restrictions to getting this robot done, and has kept Build season somewhat smoother (it can only get so smooth no matter what).

[Barngirl425]

being a tiny school news travels fast. Everyone knows about our team but they know all the bad things that have happened the past few years, it has hurt our reputation deeply. Last two years we were stuck in a corner of the chem lab and had to clean up and bring everything up everyday. That was from the basement to the top floor 2 flights of stairs. Our school is not allowed to fundraise so they paid for our regional and gave us $300 to build last year. This year with a new faculty advisor we were able to get a real place to work a small room and we were allowed $1000 to build.

we are known at our school. The way we get our meetings known to members is by a weekly assembly that the entire school goes to. Next fall I hope to bring the robot to one in the beginning, (would have loved to do it this year but finals this week along with AP testing) Also bringing it out occasionally during lunch and driving around.

All in all the support from our student body along with administration has gone way up . The school knows about everything that happens with the robotics program, the bad and this year the amazing turn around.

[kjolana1124]

Let's start by setting the scene, shall we?

Avon is a small suburb outside of Hartford, Connecticut. A nice, fairly conservative town where most parents work for the big insurance firms in Hartford or other like companies. 60%+ students take part in athletics, and they always make the front page of local papers.

Great start so far. :rolleyes:

Avon High School and 1124 often times have...differences. We get the old shop from back when we had wood shop. This contains a drill press, a band saw, a chop saw, some tables, and a white board. That's all the school gave us. Everything and anything else in there, we had to get (except for maybe some other tools). Even so, the drama department shares the space with us, and many a times ends up going through our tools and misplacing them. We also use the adjacent CAD room, but the teacher really doesn't like us in there as much as we need to be. Lastly, we get a trophy case in the main hallway in between these two rooms. It's actually a really nice display- enough for three banners, two monitor screens and a slew of trophies on a nice little table we built. The problem is, the school's always trying to take it from us. We really have to fight for it. What's more, when we win anything, we only get a mention on the announcements if we write it ourselves. They don't take note to keep track of how we did. And it's read by a student who doesn't really understand the program, so it doesn't always make sense when they announce it. Also, may of the administrators have some issues with some our mentors and the way we organize events.

Now, the students. I think we can all guess where I'm going with this one. It's "that robotics thing." No, we don't kill each other with robots and no, it's not a science fair. It's even gotten to a point where most of our own students don't wear our team shirt to school unless they have to, and in most cases they stuff it in their bag to change into. They claim it's weird or stupid and they don't like getting picked on by others.

Here's an example. A few months back our town had this HUGE rally to support to school budge. I along with a few other team members decided to wear my team shirt, seeing as it's an Avon High School team. Other team members said they were gonna wear them, but once again didn't want to stand out. It started with a march from the middle school to the high school (same street). When I finally got to the high school after marching, I had to fight my way through the crowd to get inside quick because the jazz band was playing. But, to the others, it just kind of looked like I wanted to be in front, yeah I can see that. That's not what got to me. What got to me were the kids yelling "Oh don't worry if they cut sports we'll still have UberBots!" "Okay our nerd club is safe!" I was aware that, because we're fully funded by outside sources, we weren't in danger with the budget. But I mean...really? Really guys? Many, if not all of our members, have other connections with programs that were getting cut. I myself am involved in music and my sister does sports. Was I asked this? No, I was in the nerd club.

And when we win something, any kind of competition, we normally wear our shirts the following Monday. But even then many of our members don't feel comfortable wearing it...even our president this year. It's easier to blend in than to show your smart, I suppose. So when we do win, I often times find myself explaining what we won to my friends or classmates. That's fine, I don't expect them to understand. But, even if they ask, you can tell that they think it's stupid.

It starts young around here too. We do demos every year for the 8th graders so they can get an idea of what we're about. Many of them just see a robot and go "oh...nerds." Yes, I am well aware that middle schoolers are a lot less mature than high school kids (except any middle schoolers that may be on CD. You're in FIRST...consider yourself above and beyond what's normal), but still. It's the culture around here.

Now, I know I sound really cynical here, and maybe that's because it's also 1 AM, but it really annoys me. So many kids in Avon dream of becoming sports stars, or just go to parties and not even think about their future, or just brush FIRST off as stupid and don't bother to look more into it. It's so angering.

However, I am not really really upset about this. I can't say I'm surprised. FIRST is about changing cultures. My culture may appear hard to change, but I think it can be done. I feel it's gonna have to start with our school staff getting along better with the team, and then afterwards it'll be easier for the student body to follow.

FIRST works to inspire others, and I work for FIRST. Therefore, I want to show my school just what FIRST can really do. I think we'll start with a clear presentation outlining the differences between us and Battle Bots...

[rotolomi]

The Pioneers are composed of two sister schools in the same district (Pascack Valley and Pascack Hills High School) and we get moderate support. Our principals and superintendent come to the closest regional we attend, the New Jersey Regional, and they provide us with a great amount of financial support (as a reward for this year's success they helped us pay for plane tickets to Atlanta rather than a bus). The Board of Ed also allows us to demonstrate our robot every year and congratulate us at one meeting a year. Whenever we come back from a regional, they make an announcement congratulating us on our accomplishments and teachers show enthusiasm for the team, too. As for the students, we generally get a few questions about the trip or the robot (and the battle bots questions) and some congrats from friends who know we did well but don't really understand what we did.

[Andrew Schreiber]

It's interesting how big the range of support is for individual teams.

As for the Killer Bees:

Because our shop is not located in the school, for a long time (back in 2000-2005ish) I don't think many people even really knew about our team. When I was a student, and was looking for a 2003 extracurricular activity to do, someone suggested the robotics team, and I had no clue what it is (and they had just come in second place at the Championship in Orlando in 2001!)

Now we're doing better to spread the word around the school. Some of the ways that we have done this are by:

Bringing the robot to math and science classes
Demonstrating at freshman orientation
Demonstrating at freshman cornroast
Participating in Pep rallies
Having a booth at the school's Open house
Providing fan buses to local cometition (FiM has greatly helped with this, by having district events that are located closer to the school)
Awarding a Varsity letter to students who have made a large contribution to the team
Wearing our bright yellow team shirts to some sports team's events, like a varsity basketball home game
Bringing the robot to show off at lunchtimes in the cafetorium
Winning awards at competitions. The school faculty especially enjoys receiving Chairman's trophies.
Writing letters to all faculty and administration inviting them to attend our closest event (we had two people show up)
Having two of our very own trophy cases in the main hallway of the school.
Updating a bulletin board, also located in the main hallway, in the school every season
Linking from the school's website directly to our team's website (killerbees33.com go check it out ;))


All this aside, we are still not as visible in the school as we want to be. There are still many students who think it's a geek club or too nerdy for them. And the administration at the school often tells our students that we should change our name to "The Fighting Irish" (as our school is Notre Dame Preparatory, The Fighting Irish), because they don't comprehend the real life marketing that has gone into our image as The Killer Bees.

Does anyone have any other suggestions to gather more school support?

Get more involved in the FLL program at Marist! Of course, my experiences there are nearly a decade old but I know Marist used to run 2 FLL teams. Having been on one of those teams I am surprised, looking back, that there was not much involvement with the FRC team. Has this changed? I know they are drawing a lot of imagery from 33 now but can't tell much more than that.


For those of you who don't know Marist and Notre Dame Prep are a Middle School and High School that are located in the same building (unless something major has changed in the 7 yrs since I was last there).

[davidthefat]

No one cares... Football doesnt even get to a lot of people, they don't know the scores from friday night (In fact I tend to forget the actual scores my self... Even if I am on the team...) My school is more of an academic school. But our Football team is also great, Varsity was 9 - 3 and JV (I was on JV) was 8 - 2... Freshmen just suck... So if Football doesnt get 100% of the people's attention, robot does not even get 1%...


edit: Football is a big part of my school, the 25% that don't care are like the people that don't care about school, just grades

[Bmcdonnell]

Our team, 2062 is composed of three different schools, so I can only talk about the one I go to. Ever since we got a new administration, attention to the robotics team has gone way up. The principle knows me and the rest of the team members that go there by name and the majority of the teachers know us as well, even if we haven't had them. We use to have to write our own announcements about our regionals, but not anymore. We have had people come to our closest regional and help cheer us on, even a few *very few* kids. We are able to give presentations to the school board, and put videos about our team on the local broadcasting station and video announcements. Honestly, I have never been called a nerd or anything, just a congrats at whatever we did from people I don't even know. The administration places our trophies next to all the sport ones, and we have some of the biggest ones :D At the beginning of our team, it was very hard to get recognized, but now we are forced to be in pep rallies and what not. Again, I'm not sure about the other schools, but I can't imagine the at least one of the other ones to be much different.

[J-Blondie]

At my school, Rufus King in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, our general student body doesn't know much about us. We (Team 1675) won the Midwest Regional in 2009 and we ended up getting a pep-rally for that. It was also a pep-rally for other things, amongst which was the chess team, so I think it was definitely the most nerdiest pep-rallies in our school's history.

Surprisingly, the other school that is affiliated with our team, Bradley Tech, does not have as much involvement or interest even though they are a technical school and many of their graduates go on to be engineers. I guess it just all depends on the school as well as the community and area that you live in. Since we are from a large city, we aren't as locally famous but we are trying to get FIRST out a lot more.

[nskerven]

I'm also on 2062 and go to another of the three high schools that makes up the team. For the most part, the student body either doesn't know about it or thinks its largely a group for nerds. I showed a handful of regional matches to a couple of my classes and put a pair of announcements regarding our 10,000 Lakes victory and success in Atlanta. The announcement led to acalades for the handful of team members from our school but still, few have any notable regard for it. I am going to talk to our Athletic Director though and see if he'd be willing to put up a banner for winning the 2008 Wisconsin Regional or the 2010 10000 Lakes regional.

[xxjgdancexx]

My school, in gereral, does not really care except for the people on the team or who are fellow nerds with similar intrests. We were not even in the yearbook >__> But that is, in a way, a good thing since most of the people at my school do not care about education whatsoever and we do not want those irresponible students on the team.

[Andrew Schreiber]

My school, in gereral, does not really care except for the people on the team or who are fellow nerds with similar intrests. We were not even in the yearbook >__> But that is, in a way, a good thing since most of the people at my school do not care about education whatsoever and we do not want those irresponible students on the team.

I'm sorry this is among the most incorrect statements I have ever heard.

You want those students, or you should. You should want those students so you can show them how to be responsible. How to care about education. FIRST is not about building the machines it is about changing the culture. How are you going to do that without going outside the stereotype?

Remember:
I am a nice shark. Not a mindless eatin' machine. If I want to change this image, I must first change myself. Fish are friends. Not food.

[gorrilla]

The kids at my school know about our team, they just dont care.....

It's really frustrating, my school dosent seem to have "robotics" type people.

[Karibou]

The kids at my school know about our team, they just dont care.....

It's really frustrating, my school dosent seem to have "robotics" type people.

Then find the people you think would be willing to hang out around for 6 weeks of the year, at the least. As I finished 8th grade, I wasn't one of those "robotics" type people either.

[gorrilla]

Then find the people you think would be willing to hang out around for 6 weeks of the year, at the least. As I finished 8th grade, I wasn't one of those "robotics" type people either.

What I meant was that,
The school dosn't have a lot of people that are willing to actually work for something, weather or not they are "Robotics" types.

[Wildcat]

sounds like this discussion is leaning towards a campaign to get FIRST robotics recognized in schools

[xxjgdancexx]

I'm sorry this is among the most incorrect statements I have ever heard.

You want those students, or you should. You should want those students so you can show them how to be responsible. How to care about education. FIRST is not about building the machines it is about changing the culture. How are you going to do that without going outside the stereotype?


They are given the opportunity but they do not take it. I wish they did care but we do not need people forced on the team because this would only slow down our progress as a team. We have slowly branched out over the years though to cover the three schools in the district. Next year we hope to have lots of new people do to our advertising for FIRST.

[fireyoshi]

sounds like this discussion is leaning towards a campaign to get FIRST robotics recognized in schools

My prediction for next year's Dean's homework.

[Akash Rastogi]

The kids at my school know about our team, they just dont care.....

It's really frustrating, my school dosent seem to have "robotics" type people.

What exactly would you call "robotics type" people? I've never understood this from other teams.

The more you treat this or think of it as something not everyone can do or enjoy, the harder it will be for you to get more people involved.

Our school has very strong support for the team. The students in our school are very supportive as well and are always interested in regional and other competition results and ask how everything is going. We have a diverse mix of kids. All of the subteam captains for 2011 are varsity athletes (hockey, football, track, and soccer). Maybe we're just lucky enough to have a student body that doesn't care much for difference between "cliques" and everyone gets along with everyone. Where the popular kids respect the "nerds" and join them on the robotics team. Hell, half the time the jocks and popular kids are the most intelligent ones too.

.

[MagiChau]

The kids at my school know about our team, they just dont care.....

It's really frustrating, my school dosent seem to have "robotics" type people.

what is a "robotics" type person? I try to find people who are willing to spend time to try and see where that gets me. Though that involves telling people "you don't need any experience or expertise" quite a bit when you talk to fellow classmates.

I will try wearing my team shirt again May 17, 2010 and see where that gets me. (Team does a presentation for school Board yearly so I could say I don't want to change clothes or something for it.) I must talk to people! :ahh:

[Carolyn_Grace]

Get more involved in the FLL program at Marist! Of course, my experiences there are nearly a decade old but I know Marist used to run 2 FLL teams. Having been on one of those teams I am surprised, looking back, that there was not much involvement with the FRC team. Has this changed? I know they are drawing a lot of imagery from 33 now but can't tell much more than that.


For those of you who don't know Marist and Notre Dame Prep are a Middle School and High School that are located in the same building (unless something major has changed in the 7 yrs since I was last there).

We have gotten more involved in the Marist FLL team. A large handful of our current crop of freshman and sophomores came from the Yellow Jackets, and have a passion for mentoring them. Hopefully we can keep this going and grow the program some more.

We also invite them to our FLL Summer camp.

[MagiChau]

Well after confirming that Team 85 is recognized as a club I am going to attempt a push for us to be recognized as a team. I do not know of any benefits of being recognized as a team besides the fact that we are indeed classified as an actual team.

Does anyone mind giving me advice on pursuing this? I never have done any activity relating to petitions before so I am going to learn along the way.

[Chris is me]

They are given the opportunity but they do not take it. I wish they did care but we do not need people forced on the team because this would only slow down our progress as a team. We have slowly branched out over the years though to cover the three schools in the district. Next year we hope to have lots of new people do to our advertising for FIRST.

What do you mean slow down your team? The poin of your robotics team isn't to build efficient and successful robots, it's to get these people involved. I you turn a kid away from inspiration because it'll take time from the team, I think you're missing the point a little. I don't mean to say welcome all the slackers everywhere and let them get away with doing nothing, but if you don't extend the olive branch you're not doing much to inspire people to pursue STEM.

[ttldomination]

what is a "robotics" type person?

I don't think there is one. :P

I mean, if we look at the scope of presidents in the past years for my team. It's included all from someone who loves playing music with his band to someone who loves playing the wii and ultimate frisbee in the park.

There is a "robotics" type person in all of us. The key is to introduce that person into an environment where this "inner robotics person" is unlocked.

- Sunny

[Wildcat]

i know ive already epressed the lack of support of robotics at my schools but after yearbooks were distributed the other day all i have to say is wow...my school's auto club (which i didnt even know we had until just the other day) received more attention than robotics. Robotics and Auto had to share a page in the yearbook, the auto club got about 75% of it...because of this i definitely support and enforce the previous claim that deans homework next year will to get FIRST to become more recognized in schools

[MagiChau]

i know ive already epressed the lack of support of robotics at my schools but after yearbooks were distributed the other day all i have to say is wow...my school's auto club (which i didnt even know we had until just the other day) received more attention than robotics. Robotics and Auto had to share a page in the yearbook, the auto club got about 75% of it...because of this i definitely support and enforce the previous claim that deans homework next year will to get FIRST to become more recognized in schools

Wow not even one entire page to the robotics team? I regretted that in the page in my school's yearbook it didn't include the team picture. The page had a picture of our robot in competition, the playing field for breakaway, and a random picture of a mentor & student.

It seems entirely plausible that very well could be Dean's Homework. I feel a little pain every time I sit through announcements that spends an entire minute for talking about last night's soccer game yet only 3 seconds for the robotics team getting our first Chairman's Award.

[Wildcat]

I feel a little pain every time I sit through announcements that spends an entire minute for talking about last night's soccer game yet only 3 seconds for the robotics team getting our first Chairman's Award.

at least your team gets mentioned on your school anouncements, my team doesnt even get mentioned at all, and we have people from robotics that work on my schools anouncements

[MagiChau]

at least your team gets mentioned on your school anouncements, my team doesnt even get mentioned at all, and we have people from robotics that work on my schools anouncements

:yikes: Could you try and convince the school's staff to listen to a presentation of the importance of this team? I don't know how much that would change minds but them not being told anything about robotics won't do anything. Though it is easier said than done.

[Katie_UPS]

At my school, Rufus King in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, our general student body doesn't know much about us. We (Team 1675) won the Midwest Regional in 2009 and we ended up getting a pep-rally for that. It was also a pep-rally for other things, amongst which was the chess team, so I think it was definitely the most nerdiest pep-rallies in our school's history.

Surprisingly, the other school that is affiliated with our team, Bradley Tech, does not have as much involvement or interest even though they are a technical school and many of their graduates go on to be engineers. I guess it just all depends on the school as well as the community and area that you live in. Since we are from a large city, we aren't as locally famous but we are trying to get FIRST out a lot more.

About half the kids from our (Janelle and I) school know we have a team. Of that, 75% don't know our name or number. The administration is pretty supportive at both schools. At the school that hosts the pep-rally, the teachers and administration are interested and supportive. At the technical school, the administration is very supportive (they have said they wanted to help as much as possible), and we have 50/50 teacher support.

Students at both school are under the misnomer that robotics is for "geeky" kids, which is one our biggest recruiting problems. Both of the schools are big schools though, over a thousand students each... its hard to get everyone to understand the procedure for a pep-rally, none the less that we have a robotics team.

They are given the opportunity but they do not take it. I wish they did care but we do not need people forced on the team because this would only slow down our progress as a team. We have slowly branched out over the years though to cover the three schools in the district. Next year we hope to have lots of new people do to our advertising for FIRST.

What do you mean slow down your team? The poin of your robotics team isn't to build efficient and successful robots, it's to get these people involved. I you turn a kid away from inspiration because it'll take time from the team, I think you're missing the point a little. I don't mean to say welcome all the slackers everywhere and let them get away with doing nothing, but if you don't extend the olive branch you're not doing much to inspire people to pursue STEM.

Chris, I think they mean that they don't want a student that is forced on the team (by friends or whatever) that doesn't want to be there. That means they don't care about the team/robot. This means they are unmotivated. Students need some internal motivation to be helpful.

[mwtidd]

Let me start this off by saying the average size of a graduating class when I joined FIRST was 30 students at my high school. We had great support from both the school and community. We had around 20 students on the team, which was quite a feat. We had a huger percentage of involvement and this was based on 3 things: motivation, scope, and social.

Ironically the reason out team succeeded in spreading FIRST was because we didn't have a robotics club. FIRST became a whole different beast, and the robot honestly only brought 5 or so members to the team. So what did it for us:

Motivation- at the end of the year we got to take a trip to Houston with all of our closest friends

Scope- FIRST was not robotics (at least not in our high school), it was almost entirely business.

Social- Friends and couples made up our entire team.

Now this story even though I may sound optimistic is actually a tragedy. Because of the mixture of motivation and social, certain things occurred that were inappropriate and immature. The consequences of these actions killed our team. It killed the team because first the motivation when away, no more long distance trips. This killed the scope, as the we didn't need a business side (school sponsored one event). Which went on to kill the social side, even our closest friends weren't attracted to the program.

I believe that the teams that are able to integrate these three factors in their teams and are able to avoid the gfbf pitfall we ran into, have much better support from their schools and communities.

...another chapter in my business sells FIRST better series :)

[xxjgdancexx]

Chris, I think they mean that they don't want a student that is forced on the team (by friends or whatever) that doesn't want to be there. That means they don't care about the team/robot. This means they are unmotivated. Students need some internal motivation to be helpful.

Exactlly what I was trying to say

[ebarker]

It took 7 years but success at last.

Team news is covered in faculty meetings and also covered on the student run school news channel. Teachers support the team and wish them well in their endeavors.

Our front hallway prominently displays the FIRST banners we have won. The team will be recognized (for the 2nd time) by the district board of education in a recognition ceremony. Our district is the 2nd largest district in the state.

There were two or more mentions of robotics at the graduation baccaluarate ceremony and several mentions at the graduation. We also have cords and letters.

Our current roster at the beginning of the summer after dropping graduating seniors and adding new recruits is already at 51 students, 54% female.

There will always be student in the school, any school, every school that don't know or care we exist. It's a teenage thing.

But for the most part I'm very pleased with our team and school progress.

Now for the hard part. Making our gains consistent and sustainable.

Ed

[sithmonkey13]

Very few people actually know about the team. The day before the competition we all got to wear our shirts, and most people were asking the 20 kids what the shirt was for. We get one classroom and part of a hall, plus a closet (about 20 square feet) to work on the robot. Most people in my school have no clue that there is a pretty successful team there, or even that three working robots reside in school and three more from my team reside at Boeing (in St. Louis).

[Katie_UPS]

Very few people actually know about the team. The day before the competition we all got to wear our shirts, and most people were asking the 20 kids what the shirt was for. We get one classroom and part of a hall, plus a closet (about 20 square feet) to work on the robot. Most people in my school have no clue that there is a pretty successful team there, or even that three working robots reside in school and three more from my team reside at Boeing (in St. Louis).
Why are so many of you saying "Oh, this one day we all wore our robotics shirts" like its something that you NEVER do? I swear, I wear my robotics shirts just as much as my other t-shirts. Heck, I used to wear them more often then my other shirts.

[Chris is me]

Why are so many of you saying "Oh, this one day we all wore our robotics shirts" like its something that you NEVER do? I swear, I wear my robotics shirts just as much as my other t-shirts. Heck, I used to wear them more often then my other shirts.

Some teams discourage their members from wearing team shirts like normal T-shirts.

[bam-bam]

Some teams discourage their members from wearing team shirts like normal T-shirts.

What?
Why?
I wear my shirt, knowing these people have no idea what the heck is this, and I'm proud of it!

[Karibou]

Some teams discourage their members from wearing team shirts like normal T-shirts.

That idea scares me. A lot of our team promotion within the student body comes from team members wearing our shirts to school.

However, I can imagine some instances where it would be discouraged. Teams with really nice, expensive, not-made-of-100%-cotton shirts, like 573* and 365, might not want the shirts getting dirty, faded, or destroyed.


*573's schools have uniforms and I don't think it would be a problem for them, but they're one of the first teams that comes to mind when I think of a different type of shirt.

[onecoolc]

Why are so many of you saying "Oh, this one day we all wore our robotics shirts" like its something that you NEVER do? I swear, I wear my robotics shirts just as much as my other t-shirts. Heck, I used to wear them more often then my other shirts.

Because every single team shirt I have ever owned manages to get grease/oil/etc stains on it? (Which is unexplainable as I am a programmer, awards represenative, and head scout. I don't WORK in the pit).
I mean, that's all fine and dandy when you're at competition, but wearing a stained polo to school isn't at the top of my list.

[Tanner]

I don't think I go a week of school without wearing less than three robotics shirts.

-Tanner

[pSYeNCe]

Our support is somewhere in the middle, I would think.

The school has provided us our workspace and computers, and we have a few teachers that come to our competitions. I would say that just about the whole school knows we have a robotics program, but it's not that often that someone asks how robotics is going. When we get back from competitions we're normally asked how we did, but other than that most people don't pay much interest to it (other than the enthusiastic team itself!).

[IFB662]

At team 662 our robotics team is district wide. Most people at my school don't even know that we have a robotics team. When I tell them about it they seem to think that it is battle bots or they seem to think that we are all huge nerds which is far from the truth. I find this is the main problem for kids not joining robotics. Do you all find that?

The district pushed us around alittle bit we didn't have a permanant build space for the first 3 years I was on the team. Now we have a good buildspace and they keep giving us money.

Next year we plan to do way more outreach to the middle and highschools so that hopefully more kids will want to join the team, as we lost alot of seniors.

[pSYeNCe]

I don't think I go a week of school without wearing less than three robotics shirts.


Haha, I normally wear one or two a week too! Mine have remained overall clean due to my web/programming jobs, though they do have some holes in the from rogue buttons :rolleyes:

[MagiChau]

Haha, I normally wear one or two a week too! Mine have remained overall clean due to my web/programming jobs, though they do have some holes in the from rogue buttons :rolleyes:

I wear mine whenever I feel the need to have double pockets for stuff :ahh:

[BX MARK]

Haha, I normally wear one or two a week too! Mine have remained overall clean due to my web/programming jobs, though they do have some holes in the from rogue buttons :rolleyes:

I generally wear one of my shirts at least once a week. I find this to be a very effective way to start conversations about our team and what we do. Recently a girl at school came up to me and said that she has seen our shirts all over school an wondered how she could get one, needless to say im pretty sure our team has a new member for next season :) I also understand that some teams can't wear them for different reasons, but if at all possible wear your shirts!!!

[kjolana1124]

Some teams discourage their members from wearing team shirts like normal T-shirts.


Gee, wonder where you got that idea. :rolleyes:

Our team feels that our shirts are too bright and obnoxious so they don't like wearing them.

I wore a 217 shirt to try and prove a point. I don't think they got it.

[Rick TYler]

Gee, wonder where you got that idea. :rolleyes:

Our team feels that our shirts are too bright and obnoxious so they don't like wearing them.

I wore a 217 shirt to try and prove a point. I don't think they got it.

We wear very bright shirts for competitions, but we printed white shirts with the same art work to wear to school. No excuses. :)

[AcesJames]

Gee, wonder where you got that idea. :rolleyes:

Our team feels that our shirts are too bright and obnoxious so they don't like wearing them.

I wore a 217 shirt to try and prove a point. I don't think they got it.

Your team has no excuses not to wear shirts to school. I wore your's the other day and kids started asking me where they could get one ;)

On the note of shirts though, 176 has regular cotton polos that are royal blue. A lot of us wear them to school from time to time, but we never really coordinate a day to all wear them together, which I'd really like to do, because it shows how many of us are really involved. Plus it shows we actually exist... :rolleyes:

[Radical Pi]

I generally wear one of my shirts at least once a week. I find this to be a very effective way to start conversations about our team and what we do.

Very much agreed. So far when wearing my team T-Shirt, I've been asked what it's for a bunch of times by my classmates, gotten into a conversation about the team with the lunch server, and found out that one of the bus drivers for our end of the year band trip drove a (Canadian I think) team down to Atlanta. And I've only had one since the first week of regionals this year

[Chris is me]

Gee, wonder where you got that idea. :rolleyes:

Not from Shaker... I believe team shirt days have been coordinated in the past.

[CENTURION]

We get some recognition in our school, we had school-wide announcements, and a place on the schools announcement board about our success (kind of) at the Championship. For the most part, our team remains generally unknown. Placing somewhere in the neighborhood of 18th in the world helped us a lot, I was getting asked about it all day long, but it's still hard to recruit people. :P

Due to the small physical size of our school, we can't get our own classroom or anything to have a buildsite, the most we get from the school is a little bit of funding, several mentors, and a display case (that is sorely in need of something more impressive than what is in it)

[Pirate_Nelly354]

They cared about us in 2007 when we won the NYC regional. We have two bulletin boards, one big (in a hallway no one walks by), and one small.

We put up flyers around the school, we're there at open houses and parent-teacher nights talking to students and adults but nope, they don't care. At this year's regional, not one student showed up.

[pSYeNCe]

They cared about us in 2007 when we won the NYC regional.
...
At this year's regional, not one student showed up.
Yeah, we don't have non-team students showing up. I guess most of them just don't want to spend a day watching robots (yes, I know it's much more than that, but they don't see it that way). Them being that fickle makes me angry though... But I guess that's how people are.

[Wildcat]

Yeah, we don't have non-team students showing up. its pretty much the same for my team. the only non-members we have show up are parents/relatives of team members, and the occasional girlfriend of a team member

[JaneYoung]

Just a question: how much has your robotics team shown the school/general population that you care?

Have you:
- shown up in your team shirts ready to cheer on the basketball team, the football team, the wrestling team, etc.?
- found creative ways to make a positive impact on your school's atmosphere? One example would be to celebrate your teachers' commitment to helping educate you and working to create a special day of recognition or joining in with one that is already in place.
- discussed ways to build bridges between the administration and the team or the other areas of the school that are non-technical, such as Fine Arts?

Jane

[Wildcat]

Just a question: how much has your robotics team shown the school/general population that you care?

Have you:
- shown up in your team shirts ready to cheer on the basketball team, the football team, the wrestling team, etc.?
- found creative ways to make a positive impact on your school's atmosphere? One example would be to celebrate your teachers' commitment to helping educate you and working to create a special day of recognition or joining in with one that is already in place.
- discussed ways to build bridges between the administration and the team or the other areas of the school that are non-technical, such as Fine Arts?

Jane
1- football: we have members of the team on the football team though, as for b-ball: they play during our build season so we cant.
2- closest thing we have ever done to that is paint our teams logo in 2 places in one building of our 4-building collage sized campus
3- never, with 6.2k students and about 500 faculty divided among 3 schools on 1 campus would just be too many different people to deal with, since each school has its own department of subjects

[JaneYoung]

3- never, with 6.2k students and about 500 faculty divided among 3 schools on 1 campus would just be too many different people to deal with, since each school has its own department of subjects

That may be something to explore in this thread or one that develops from this:
- the sizes of the schools and how they are structured
- teams that are made up of more than one school
- how large the faculty is
- how accessible the school board is
- what kind of overlap the team members have with other teams/organizations and if partnerships are possibilities

I'm thinking that a school that has a student population of 6000 would have some different constraints than a school with a much smaller population. Same thing with teams made up of students from one school and teams made up of students from multiple schools. It might be fun to explore the differences and similarities and discuss some ideas or thoughts.

Jane

[ThaineP]

My school?

You could fit the entire everybody in my school that cares (minus the team obviously) in a matchbox and still have room for the matches.

:P

[Tuefel Hunden]

Our school's facility know that we exsist, but that's were it ends. We were having our awards banquet and we served the meal outside. We had the robots out demoing them and just so happen that there was a laccrose game ending and the students were passing our event. They were amazed!!! They were saying things like, "We have a robotics team?" and "Do they actually let you make this here?". Some even took pictures. So I'll have to agree with eveyone else in saying that people in the school don't know about us. I think that we're going to change that this year at Club Rush.:D

[Eagleeyedan]

Our team, 2062 is composed of three different schools, so I can only talk about the one I go to. Ever since we got a new administration, attention to the robotics team has gone way up. The principle knows me and the rest of the team members that go there by name and the majority of the teachers know us as well, even if we haven't had them. We use to have to write our own announcements about our regionals, but not anymore. We have had people come to our closest regional and help cheer us on, even a few *very few* kids. We are able to give presentations to the school board, and put videos about our team on the local broadcasting station and video announcements. Honestly, I have never been called a nerd or anything, just a congrats at whatever we did from people I don't even know. The administration places our trophies next to all the sport ones, and we have some of the biggest ones :D At the beginning of our team, it was very hard to get recognized, but now we are forced to be in pep rallies and what not. Again, I'm not sure about the other schools, but I can't imagine the at least one of the other ones to be much different.

Actually, 4 schools. Don't forget about homeschool!

[gyroscopeRaptor]

This is our first year, and we aren't recognized too much yet. But we do have 20 people who have built on the robot so far, and we did show it at the Winterfest dodgeball tournament (link to video) (http://alfirstrobotics.blogspot.com/2011/02/robot-steals-show-at-winterfest.html). We will have t-shirts by the end of the week, and the school's video production and broadcast class will do a video for us before ship date. We showed it at the middle school, and we have a basketball game and a school board meeting lined up. We are working on our image.

[2bkrul]

Very slim, we were just able to compete in FRC the last few years. With the help of NASA and our new principle we were just able to make it. In terms of supporting the team, there is NONE what so ever. We try to get announcements made about meeting and other things, but it doesnt happen. Barely any teachers know who we are and its disappointing. Yes our team has its problems and we might not be the best in the school, but we get more out of what we do in FIRST then we would being in football or any other sport (even though we are a "varsity sport for the mind."

At the beginning our principle was supportive, willing to help us out with anything, but when everything started up, his support dropped. Our admin team knows who we are (because of some drama with the member) but they dont know what we do and how much it means to us. The teachers dont do anything, they hear us talk about it but they dont congratulate and ask how its going.

I am very fed up with the lack of support, not just here, but across the entire world (even though the subtle hint with Will.I.Am at the super bowl was nice) Yes, there are some teams that have LOADS of support, but there are the teams that are running out of a garage because of a lack of support and funding.

If anyone has any ideas about ways to gain support, please PM me

[fyrefrost]

The only time my robotics team ever really gets any attention is when we take the robot out and drive it around durring open enrollment night. Not very many members of the general population know about us. Our football team gets a lot of attention, as do several other sports. I don't think a nonteam member that's not a parent has ever shown up to our regional.

[KC1AJT]

Our team is from a tech school so it recieves a ton of support within the school. Our school is our biggest sponsor, even donating the use of most shops in the school (as well as their students). The Boston Regional has been used as a school-wide field trip, also. This year, a few shops have added robotics to their teachings and are helping more and more with the robot (sometimes too much). The school is seeing a decrease in skill-oriented trades and is pushing robotics more and more as a way to introduce every student to engineering.

[Newo95]

Almost noone at school has even heard of us. we have a single bullatin board with a few pictures and our number, but it is surrounded by dozens of other boards advertising the other clubs and organizations at the school. The only reason anyone has even heard of us is that we have a robot we built during the off season which shoots t-shirts. T-shirt bot, as it's cleverly been named, is guarenteed to break one way or another everytime it is in front of an audiance of more than fifty for mor than five seconds. It also has a tendancy to be unable to hit the bleachers; it will either clear them entirely, or land at the feat of the people in the front row. We are the laughing stock for those who know us.

[Morgan B]

Well now I feel spoiled reading some. Im a freshman on the 3620 team We get to use the woodshop classroom, the actual woodshop room with tables and as many power tools as any person on the build team would want...:D we also have two "labs." One is small and basically belongs to the programmers (Their den) and another used for CAD by us. Plus we have a "robotics lab" which was the metal shop room at one point.

To actually answer the question, the first two years (this is all from what I've heard and I know) were pretty rough on getting people to join. After we went to state last year so many people wanted to be a part. Im one of the 20 who are coming daily to work and personally I think most of the team doesn't appreciate everyone as a whole as others do... People at school basically responds with "oh, yea, that's cool or whatever..." They do know we are there, they just end up slightly acknowledging our presence. We present to the school board and the teachers are very nice. We are just one big group of (Mainly) happy socially awkward friends.

[JDL]

Less then zero. We're lucky to get about 5 new kids out of about 1500 students interested each year.

It's a very sports centered school. Their last principal was an cheerleader there when she was a student and was only worried about cheer and the football teams and the current one cares more about the FIRST teams from his past high schools then us :mad:

The district looks at us like a piece of dog poo they just scraped off their shoe too. Our sponsor has been fighting forever to get a robotics class started so students can get credit and more time to build.

We get passed over for getting our own room to work out of every year too, we thought last year was gonna be our year but instead the perfect room went to the ROTC program and they took all the work counters and storage out. :mad: :mad: :mad:

No appreciation for STEM what so ever.

[math311]

Our team has been around for seven years. I am a senior, and when I joined, I know that I had never actually heard of robotics in the general school setting. I heard about it from a friend on the team, not through a display or ad. We have grown our membership and gradually increased our presence. We have two display cases with signs and trophies, a robot using IFI controls that we built last summer to launch t-shirts at football (people love these things, every team should have one if possible), and I occasionally take the robot for a spin in the lunch room, and shoot basketballs at varsity basketball games.

Our school likes us. We have a wonderful teacher who is highly supportive, access to the metals and woods shop (to use metals shop you must actually take metals), and we were granted access to an unused room for build. Want to make sure your principal knows you exists? Every time you get a chance, walk up to them, shake their hand (firmly), look them in the eye, and ask them when they will come to visit the robotics team. It works. Not many kids will do that.

If you're a team trying to gain access to events such as football and basketball, it helps to know the athletic director personally. Ours knows me by name, and loves when robots come to games. It helps tremendously.

When I joined, it felt like nobody knew that our team existed. If I brought up robotics, people often asked "Don't you make robots fight?". This drove me nuts. But it was due to a lack of knowledge. In four years our team has become cool. Kids ask when we will bring the t-shirt bot to games, what the challenge is, etc. The key is to make yourself known. Get out there and show people robotics is cool. The other day I took a bimba cylinder to physics with me, just for fun, and my teacher asked what it was. I got to tell my physics class how our robot has to climb a pyramid AND play ultimate frolf. People thought it was awesome.

Make a name for yourselves, show everyone that you are cool:cool: . And have patience. Recognition comes with hard work.

[beiju]

This is an old thread, but the topic it addresses is ongoing. It seems like most people are using it to finally vent their frustration at the lack of recognition at their school. As someone who saw their team go from the meets-in-a-closet power-tools-are-too-expensive I-didn't-even-know-we-had-a-team-is-it-like-BattleBots stage to school wide recognition, I completely understand that and I have some advice for you. Obviously the barriers to respect for the Robotics program will be different for each school, but this is what worked for us.


Publicize the team. The rest is a lot easier if you have a reputation for at least existing, even if people don't know what you do. We organized lunchtime events after the season ended where any student could play a vastly simplified version of the game (for LogoMotion, it was just "hang tubes on pegs") and we kept a scoreboard. The next year, a few of the highest scorers joined the team and are now some of our most valued members. Do whatever you can to show people, "this is what we made and this is what it can do".
Promote yourself to incoming students. I can't stress this enough. The earlier you can get prospective students interested, the more likely they will be to stay that way. Club fairs at the beginning of the year usually happen after freshmen have started to find their niche, but if you can get them before school starts they some of then will make their niche with you. Our big success was at the open house. We got ourselves put on the official tour, set up some FRC and FTC bots for display, and then made simple basebots from the TETRIX kit that could play a simplified FTC. We let the prospective freshmen control them and a lot of them loved it. I'm pretty sure a few of our current members picked our school based on that.
Be persistent with faculty. The way we moved from a tiny closet in a mostly disused wing of the administration building to our current two former offices next to a convenient courtyard was by writing to the administration every year listing the reasons we wanted a new room, what our requirements were, and when we knew what rooms we had a chance at getting, a suggestion. We didn't end up with the room we wanted, but it's definitely a step up. In this situation, the mentioning the previous two points in a way that suggests robotics improves the school is a helpful tactic.
Take every opportunity. If you're on the lookout for ways to improve your recognition, you'll start to see them everywhere. Special event? Hold a fundraiser or exhibition. Contact on the school paper? Give them an article proposal. Friendly teacher? Ask them to announce your next event. Related topic comes up in class? Use it to talk about robotics. No matter how little support you may have from the administration, there's always something you can do.
Do well in the competition. There's a reason this is last, even though it's the main purpose of your team (another note: team, not club, makes you sound much more organized). Doing well isn't necessarily going to help your team if there's nobody outside the team who cares. As strange as it is to argue against putting all your energy into building a great robot, remember to dedicate effort to advancing your team.


The thing I'm most proud of about my time in robotics is the work we did in getting it recognized. If anyone has any specific questions about how to help their team with the same issue I'd be happy to help.

[mikeeeatwork]

Our sons team is in its first year. But the prior year they won Pioneers of Engineering at UC Berkeley the first year they participated. So roll around this year they have a teacher that signs off on it and sponsors but does nothing at all. They have a closet that they were recently kicked out of since night classes are going to be in the classroom after school. They couldn't get any donors. But FIRST came through and paid the very expensive entrance fee. They actually canvased the neighborhood going to local businesses. So right now they're doing a robot with no mentor, no teacher, no adult supervision.

They did have publicity they were in the city newspaper for the win they got with another local school. But beyond the PTA giving them $500 bucks I've seen like nada from the school. Oh one teacher showed up to help pickup the kit and bring it to school. My son handled all the paperwork and I drove them to the kickoff and the workshop. But that was onle 7 of the 25ish kids in the whole group. We're a very urban school in a city that cares little about football. But the principle currently was a athletics director and the football team seems to get a lot.

Yeah sorry its very frustrating.

[Reanna]

I would say that 60% of the students here know that we exist and of that 60%, around 10% are genuinely interested. But most of the girls aren't actually interested enough to join the team, saying "Robotics? Oh God, I'm not smart enough for that."

[Garrett.d.w]

The team used to the best kept secret of the school. I discovered it by accident, as did most of the current senior members. Recently, we have done a lot of work to change that and have become a lot more involved with the school. I would guess that about 80% of underclassmen know that we exist and about 20% are interested. About 10% of the total population is interested enough to give it a shot, BUUUUT...

Our problem is that we compete directly with the Speech and Debate team. Gonzo (the teacher) runs a successful program (they have gone to the equivelant of nationals every year) and its a lot of fun. This is great, the downside for us is that we pull from the same "talent pool". What makes them retain more students is that it is less intimidating. It's the "I'm not smart enough to do that" thought that Unicorns mentioned above.

[Leor Buch]

1657- we have a main "hangar" with a corner for cad and programming teams, we have a second room (used to be for cad, animation and FLL but I don't know if it is still in use), we also have access to the school's wood workshop and computer rooms.
we have an underpaid and extremely insane mentor (in a good way) who also teaches classes at school. since I graduated (2008) me and my fellow alumni have been coming back to aid the team, not an easy feat due to three years of mandatory army service.
the program also counts as "5 pts robotics" in our bagrut system as much as you can get for physics or biology.

Our main problem is that the team is slowly being sidelined and forgotten. every year less kids join, used to be we only took 11-12th graders since the program is very intense but now even with 10th graders the 2013 team is still smaller than the one from 2008.
Most of the school's teachers either ignore the program or advise kids not to join due to intensity. but there is one math teacher that hates it and is willing to rant on about falling grades at the slightest chance.
we do show of the robots a bunch of times each year and the main work hangar is always open to visitors.
the school's volleyball team is given much more respect despite the fact that the FRC team has a better record.

edit *I forgot to mention that each year we get a couple of girls in the team, last year I think the coach was a girl...*

[powerbomb97]

My school has a decent amount of members we had 67 which was later reduced to 40 something it's still a good amount. Another thing that make our team stand out are the Mohawks we have especially since they are red and people ask what it's for.

[toastnbacon]

Ah, I'm so glad someone gave me a chance to rant about this!

One of my (least) favorite quotes about our team came from a fellow student a couple of years ago: "We have a robotics team?". We're getting more awareness, but it's slow going. Homecoming weeks tend to be rough for me, just seeing how much people are willing to go all out for football or basketball, and yet we go ignored. We're currently making duel use in our physics classroom, that's where we build. We were going to get a little nook in a new bus barn our school built, but now everyone's just using it for storage. I love looking at the financial stats: in four years, we've gotten about $2,500 from our school. That's about one-half the $5,000 we got from JCPenney and an even smaller fraction of the $15,000+ we got from NASA. Meanwhile, we're currently installing brand new lights (poles and everything) to replace the completely functional ones previously lighting the football and baseball field. Our team just about didn't happen this year because we didn't know where we were going to get the entry fee. Now, I know we need to take responsibility for getting recognition, at least to an extent, but it's still frustrating when the basketball team gets a full gym complete with programs when we're fighting for their scraps.

Oh, that felt good to get off my chest. Thank you!

[2348humanplayer]

I have to rant on this one. Our team has had a terrifying lack of enthusiasm and dedication. Our team consisted of 40 members. We run a FLL tournament in our state. It's mandatory for the whole team. 20 said they had other things to do. But, out of the 20 that should have come....only 10 did. Our mentor was mad. So, after only 6 years of action, this year, Ultimate Ascent, will be the final year of FRC team 2348, the Cool Geeks. It was a great time having a team here, and I hope we can find a new faculty advisor.


But, the good thing is that every year at our school's first assembly, we had our club mentioned in a skit, talking about the many activities. This time, we even had our team have a t-shirt cannon. That really got interest sparked :3

[Justin Shelley]

I have the choice of participating in two different robotics teams because i go to the high school and a career/technical school. At the high school the robotics team is ridiculed but at the career school it is thought of pretty highly. I am on the robotics team at the carer school, Team 3885 The Shockers. I would have to say the difference is how the administration promotes the teams to the school. I'm not even for sure if the principal at the high school knows the robotics team exist. At the career school though the robotics team gets recognition from all the teachers and administration. The career school also has many classes that benefit us in fabricating the robot. We have a machining shop, welding shop, electrical shop, robotics shop, graphic arts shop, automotive shop, motorcycle shop, media design shop, and nursing shop. Believe it or not but all these shops help us build the robot. If not directly it is their unique experiences that can give us an "out of the box" approach to things. So i would say that school support depends on the type of students you have, how your members represent your team, and how the administration promotes your team. Remember that if your own members are embarrassed of the team, how can you expect the general student body to show pride? BE PROUD!!!! :D :cool:

[wasayanwer97]

I'm quite happy to say that a good portion of our school knows who we are and what we do, though perhaps not in deep detail. We'll have random people walk in and want to see what we're doing sometimes, that want to come upstairs and check out our shop area (but they have to wear safety glasses if we're working, which surprisingly, many of them think are actually really neat)

We have our T-Shirt shooter, which we bring out and use at all the football games, and indoors for some of our rallies. In our most recent rally, I was fortunate enough to be invited to come out and speak about our program for a while (The reaction was great when I talked about this year's game.) Many people came to us afterwards saying things like "Woah! That's so cool!"

Most of our incoming freshmen are aware of our presence as well. We secure booths at all the open houses and tour nights, bringing out an old FRC bot and a few FTC bots to put on display.

What we like to emphasize, and what we find gets recognized more, is to emphasize an open-door policy if you can. We try to make it as clear as possible that we're open to the entire student body, regardless of skill or what they know. There's something for anyone on a FIRST team, but you just need to make it look as welcoming and non-intimidating as possible. In my few short years of FIRST, I've found that so many people outside will say, 'I wish I was smart enough to do this". It's that 'robotics is only for the super smart kids' mentality that we are trying to break.

For teams who are at schools where you're barely noticed, it's important to go out and get yourself seen. Be active. Make a table at lunch, put something on display. Ask to speak at pep rallies. Build a robot for show, a T-Shirt shooter is a great project for the off-season (really nice for training new members and getting them used to working with robots), and is what most of our school has seen us by, leading them to check out the other stuff we do. Shoot shirts out at some school events, and the crowds go NUTS (Just be careful if you ever fill them with candies like we did :p That Halloween day was fun :D )

It takes some work and waiting on the team's part, but recognition comes. Perhaps the easiest ting you can do, is simply talk about robotics with friends and classmates. Ask your teachers if you could say a few words in class. Take the initiative to get the team publicized, and you will.

[Kidney]

Very little, if at all. For one, our team has been working out of and storing our materials in an abandoned stairwell/closet for its entire history (which we're actually getting kicked out of soon, and they haven't told us where they're moving us, if anywhere).

Our school administration hasn't shown a bit of positive acknowledgement towards us, it's almost as if we're a burden to them. As for the student body, we have a small local circle of friends and parents that congratulate us when we do good, but aside from that it's not much else. Regardless however, we have a good time at robotics with each other anyway. We actually removed our school logo from our team shirts this year.

[E Dawg]

We are pretty lucky with our school. The administration provides us with the entire tech shop full of mills, lathes and other shop tools we can use. We are also provided class credit for joining the team.

As for other students, there is a lot of work to be done. Most people don't know we have a team and the school news did a commercial, they didn't ask us for input and filmed tools that we didn't even use for our robot. It was not pretty.

But having the entire shop to ourselves is nice, especially because they let us use school equipment after hours.

[nickb705]

My teachers tell me good luck as the hand me any make up work that I need, and that about it

[jwallace15]

Although all of our robot building and other team-related activities take place in our school, we get almost no (good) attention.

A few days ago, someone next to me in one of my classes was reading about us winning our District Chairman's Award. Someone next to him said "Why are you reading about those nerds?" He proceeded to say "No clue" and closed out his tab.

I show my friend a lot of stuff that has to do with robotics, including swerve drive (thanks Team 16, Bomb Squad for your unveil videos :D ), our shooter, and other things. He always replies to me "I could build something better. That looks stupid."

We demoed our 2012 robot in the cafeteria at lunch, and someone came up to us and said "Your robot is really loud." and walked away. In the same lunch period, someone else came up and said "My brother could build a better robot." and walked away.

It seems that the people from my school (I'm not sure about our other 2 schools) have no respect for engineering, and the six weeks of hard work we put into our robots.

[F22Rapture]

I show my friend a lot of stuff that has to do with robotics, including swerve drive (thanks Team 16, Bomb Squad for your unveil videos :D ), our shooter, and other things. He always replies to me "I could build something better. That looks stupid."

Doesn't sound like much of a friend...

But that's a shame on the part of your school. Those attitudes are the sort that FIRST was designed to change in the first place, and I do hope that your team can turn it around a bit.

[faust1706]

By the end of build season, we are left with maybe 10 students. 2 programmers (though thats how many we've had for 3 years), 1 design, an electrical student, and some build. We do have a sign by the highway for our winning of stl Regional in 2009 and placing 31st at internationals two years ago. We show off our robot every spring assembly. It will be nice because this year, we can actually do something with our robot instead of hanging inner tubes. We start off with way too many kids who dont do much, especially the business side, then as the season grinds on, they stop coming, until competition of course.

[Clayton Yocom]

We have a very supportive administation, and parents often know more about the team than students due to our media coverage. We have a wall in the cafeteria that has all of our achievements (up to 2009, the wall isn't big enough for our more recent endevours). Most students know about the robotics team, but very few understand what we do. Last year helped a lot because of how easy it is to connect to the robot playing 3v3 basketball.

[jwallace15]

But that's a shame on the part of your school. Those attitudes are the sort that FIRST was designed to change in the first place, and I do hope that your team can turn it around a bit.

We reach out to our community as much as we possibly can to our students. We have a display case with info on our team. We participate in our pep assemblies. Unfortunately, sometimes people just have no interest in engineering. I'm a sophomore, and speak for my class. Some interest probably comes with maturity. I am pretty sure that older, more mature students appreciate the doings of FIRST more than younger people who still believe in cliques (which bug me), or think they are better than everyone else.

I don't think that "popular" people realise this; the phones that they are addicted to? Who designed them? The "nerds". The stereotypical SUV they have? Who designed that? The "nerds".

Everybody loves the football and basketball players, and the cheerleaders and poms team. Why don't people love the robotics team members? What with all the mechanisms and robots we design? You don't know how many people I've told about CADD that don't have a clue what it is. I show them, and give a quick demo on how to make a simple thing (like a box, maybe with a couple holes). They think it is the most complicated thing ever. "You know how to use that? You have way to much time on your hands." I'm sorry, and what do you do in your spare time? "Chill". Chill? What is "chilling"? "Sitting around." Sitting on the couch watching a stupid reality TV show and not doing anything that benifits your brain is better than engaging your brain, trying to solve a problem and make saucers fly and robots climb?

I apologise for my rant, Chief Delphi Community. I'm hoping someone can answer my questions. I just don't understand.

[mman1506]

Our school is a tech school so we get a decent amount of money as are school is are only sponsor and we have robotics classes.

Though are old principal liked the program so much that she cancelled the buses while we were at the competition. We also have no mentors and one teacher who stays until 6 if were lucky.

[malanis]

Two years ago our school kicked us out, Plain and simple. We have two high schools in our district, and students from both were on the team. We had so little support from the administration, and the schools population, that they turned the engineering room into a sports medicine room. As of now we work out of a space in a dying mall twenty minutes away from the schools.

[F22Rapture]

Two years ago our school kicked us out, Plain and simple. We have two high schools in our district, and students from both were on the team. We had so little support from the administration, and the schools population, that they turned the engineering room into a sports medicine room. As of now we work out of a space in a dying mall twenty minutes away from the schools.

Wow. That sucks man. I hope things work out a bit better for you guys in future years.

[karomata]

1511's first year it was mainly just 8 students on the team and a bunch of mentors. However, our rookie year we won Toronto Regional, and we ended up winning CMPs Rookie All-Star. After that our relations with the school improved greatly (even though they were already really strong) and our student population on our team exploded. Nowadays we are 45 students and have a lot of support from the administration of our school, and many students not on our team also greatly support us. It's very unfortunate that not all teams can have the support from their school that we have.

[THE DYNAMO]

At my school, many people do not know about the robotics program, but those that do (mostly the classmates of team members) don't disrespect the program, in fact, they are often amazed by the differences between the stereotype image in their head and the reality. I find most people believe that we build a complicated robot to do some useful task or complete and obstacle course, and then we are judged and ranked in the style of a science fair. when i show them match videos and the sheer scale of participation, they seem much more interested. And then there are the kids that are so disappointed when I have to tell them that FIRST is not, in fact, BattleBots. I wish we had that kind of money....:p

[THE DYNAMO]

also, the trophies and banner from winning the 2011 Las Vegas Regional attracted tons of people at club day. maybe the best thing about winning your first regional!

[ElRampa]

Our school administration is VERY supportive of us. They talk about our wins, our awards, and other things like that. The pricipal has always wanted to start a sort of engineering and tech magnet school at our high school, so he's EXTREMELY happy with news of advancement and awards we win, he even convinced our school district even pays all of our competition entrance fees to help us out :D

But that's where the good news ends. The student population, on the other hand, is hardly supportive. If at all, really.
We started the year with 26 members, and even as wins and trophies have piled up, members continue to leave. Now, we're down to 8 kids managing two FTC teams and robots, and it can get hectic. We try to talk about all that we do and how fun it is, but many students aren't willing to put in all the work that we require, even saying that two meetings a week is too much! :/
It's easy to generate interest when your school is an engineering or technology magnet school, but for just a regular high school with average kids, it's hard to get their attention. We make promotional posters, advertise that we're still allowing people to join the team, and even mention that we get to miss days of school. But yet nobody new has joined since November :///

It's sad to know that so many great minds are missing out on such a fun activity, and a productive one at that, simply because they're "too busy" to put in all the time.

Okay. I'm done.

TL;DR: Administration at school loves us, but the student body, not so much.

[RoeeVulcan]

The high staff of the school is very supportive of the group, espeicialy now with the new trophy we brought them. The school principal and vice principal came to the competition, and acctualy hugged me at the finals. it was amazing. They agreed to pay for us to go to paintball to celebrate.
We have a pretty small space in the back of a room that only 5 people have a key to, inside the shelter, but it is cool. They gave us some more space, tripel what we had last year so we are not complaining.
As far as the students body of the school than we have some improvments to make. Only a quater of the school knows we exist, and half of them know what we do. Not as bad as the vollyball team but still not good. They just hung our new, big $@#$@#$@# sign in the entry to the school, and we just started making some new videos so this should get better.
The teachers are split between supportive and unsuportive. the com[uter science is managing a mindstorm project, so we keep havin small fights on which of us is beter (obviously us, we built a giant robot he is a grown man playing with legos). and the teachers are between- "go robotics", "so proud" to- "That medal is not an acscuse to not do your hmework roee!".

So room to improvment but we are not complaining.

[MyNameIsPaul]

most kids know about it cuz we're in the announcements frequently.
BUT most people think it's just a few kids sitting in a dark room playing with their circuit boards and taking them to lame competitions..


Honestly this was my view when i first joined.

I help my team with twitter and instagram and word of mouth to try to connect with the general population since there's only a few of us on the team that truly get around socially.


TIP: try getting kids from all social groups on your teams, not just the "computer nerds" as the rest of the school thinks of robotics.

[SteveE]

We are not given any money or a place to work from our school. We have not for at least 6 years. They give us very little resources. The student are great and so are the teachers they just don't help us a lot. Mostly I feel like they like us but don't really care about us.:(

[Anyun]

Not at all. We barely get funding. The only time people even know there is a robotics team is when we drive our robot or chairbot (sofa mounted on driving base for fun times) around school.

[ezygmont708]

Our administration, student body, and community now know when robotics season is. It wasn't this way two years ago! Last year we hosted the first week 1 MAR district event. Honestly, our team was unknown within the school, we had dwindling numbers and little to no accolades.

Our event last year exposed our school population (1700+) students to FIRST. Now people ask questions, we reveal the game to the school, and over half of the high school came to see the event during the school day!

This is a benefit of the district model. It brings the events back into the schools. In fact the two convince stores near our school (Wawa) are interested in supporting our event in the future.

We also built a T-shirt cannon over the summer, which helps get the crowds amped up at basketball and football games!

[dheerm]

Generallly, only some people that weren't on the team would know about. By some people, I mean like people who were either close friends with or related to members on the team. But since our win at TCNJ(we have not won in a looooooong time), it was all over our school. All of a sudden everyone wants to join the robotics team because the news has spread all over the place.

[Robby Unruh]

Generallly, only some people that weren't on the team would know about. By some people, I mean like people who were either close friends with or related to members on the team. But since our win at TCNJ(we have not won in a looooooong time), it was all over our school. All of a sudden everyone wants to join the robotics team because the news has spread all over the place.

First, congratulations on your regional win! Second, enjoy the new students on your team. If our team had a couple more students it would be a godsend.

[ace94x]

I am on 2 teams, FTC and FRC, my FTC team just recently got its own room because a new principal came to the school and had an FRC team at his old school. But the school has no idea that it is there, my FRC team, is not offiliated with a school, we have become an orginization so, no one really knows us, so we do tons of demos each year, probable 30 demos per year, and get maybe 1-5 students to come for 1 meeting, and never return, so because your school is so into it, Congrats you have beat the system lol

[BenGrapevine]

"you guys are cool."

[kiasam111]

"you guys are cool."

I wish people would say that more...

This thread is describing the exact issue that FIRST is trying to fix. One day, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, some kid from FIRST is going to change the world. That kid could have easily become a world class sportsman, or something else like that. It's our job to capture those kids and show them the possibilities that Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths present, in the accesibility that is FIRST.

I'm presenting the school with one of our World's Entrepreneurship Trophies next Thursday, and I'm doing it two days before we leave for the Hawaii Regional. It's mainly to gain support from our new principal, but I'm hoping some new kids will see how great this program is, and how it can change lives.

[jar24]

=>0

[AllieS4246]

By the end of build season, we are left with maybe 10 students. 2 programmers (though thats how many we've had for 3 years), 1 design, an electrical student, and some build. We do have a sign by the highway for our winning of stl Regional in 2009 and placing 31st at internationals two years ago. We show off our robot every spring assembly. It will be nice because this year, we can actually do something with our robot instead of hanging inner tubes. We start off with way too many kids who dont do much, especially the business side, then as the season grinds on, they stop coming, until competition of course.

It is not that much better at this side of the river either. We have a team of about 30, but when all is said and done about 6 of us sustain the team entirely. We try to do demos at our school, but only the administration and about 1/3 of the teachers are in full support. We have had to hide the basketballs and frisbees to keep those less interested from breaking things, and like any team, when competition time comes around everyone is a game genius/ driving savant. We are working on getting an off-season event in place, and those who are less driven by the club are complaining about putting in the time and effort.

On a separate note, as a driver/ captain of the team, I respected your team very much, and thought your drivers exhibited much GP. Our qual match 75 with you was a blast. Your buttons are the best, and I do hope we get to work with you again/see you at our off-season event (if it is a go). Much respect, ratchet!:)

[AllieS4246]

I am on 2 teams, FTC and FRC, my FTC team just recently got its own room because a new principal came to the school and had an FRC team at his old school. But the school has no idea that it is there, my FRC team, is not offiliated with a school, we have become an orginization so, no one really knows us, so we do tons of demos each year, probable 30 demos per year, and get maybe 1-5 students to come for 1 meeting, and never return, so because your school is so into it, Congrats you have beat the system lol

I'd never guess that by the looks of your team. Just socializing with the drive coach for your team, you have it together. Our team is hoping to exhibit some of your GP habits and imagery in the future. (Unfortunately no fish emoji)

[Celia]

I would wager that over half of my school doesn't even know we have a robotics team. I noticed a few people talking about what their school gives them, so I thought I'd weigh in. Our school provides us with a room to work out of and a couple computers, along with a donation each year. We actually prefer this to being the high school's team. With this arrangement, our team cannot get cut when budget cuts come around. If we were more affiliated with the school, the team would have been cut long ago.

More in keeping with the thread, however, we are just the nerdy kids who practically live at school. No one cares, and no one knows, which is extremely unfortunate. We grew this year though, totaling in at 19 kids! Last season we had 15, and five were seniors. I swear, recruiting nine new members in a year must be a record on our team.

[Arrowhead]

not very much for our FRC team
Our school happens to be home of 3 FTC teams, including one of last years world champions, so when most of our school thinks of robotics, they instantly assume FTC :/

[littlemissLish]

our school gave us a room in the back of the school, however they do not even mention when we go to competition. we have gone up to the office to let them know that we are going to competition and they have never had us on the announcements. we go to some school events and people sign up, but no one actually joins. we have 25 students this year, two of which don't even go to our school. schools need to voice their teams more in my opinion.

[Squjayid]

Not at all. In fact, the only time we get noticed is if we do well at competitions! :mad: :mad:

[Trevor1523]

We too aren't well recognized... When I went to join my current team I decided to go to the guidance office to seek info and my guidance counsellor looked at me with a straight face and said "We have a robotics team?"

That pretty much sums it up.

[Brian Michell]

I can't speak that well about our schools population, but the administration at both our school and district are extremely supportive of the team. We're just one of the many lesser known clubs that are in our school but that is largely because we're only a second year team.

[TCMJ1816]

1816 is very well supported in our community.

Our principal makes regular appearances at our competitions and state championship. They do what they can to let us get visibility with the student body as well; We run robots at the homecoming assembly and at various other events throughout the year.

In our community we are very well known. We do tons of outreach in our schools with the other FIRST programs so it isn't super common to find a family that isn't at least a little familiar with the fact that we exist, some kids have been coming to our events for years and years awaiting being able to join the team.

Outreach is the best way to get interested in what you are doing. If you put yourself out there people will notice.

[erin623]

In our school, no one knows we exists or thinks we're a bunch of socially awkward nerds, so there is a stigma around joining. The school support is very iffy, but next year we plan to do heavy advertising and (hopefully) get some people who can help spread the word about the team.

[Liu346]

We are a huge football school so this year was very good for telling the rest of the school that we actually exist. I shaved my team number into my head this year and not a single person outside of robotics knew we even were a thing at their school.

[natejo99]

Our school rarely acknowledges us, and when we do it's never good. When we brought home our championship blue banner in 2014, our school gave us no recognition until the next fall, and even then we had to nearlt beg for that. When we are acknowledged by the student body it's never good. This is mainly due to one former team member who quit due to some issues with specific other team members. Unfortunately people tend to listen to and trust what he says, and he has a tendency to bad mouth our team. This has been a huge hit to us, as it has framed our team as very undesirable to be part of at our school, and that has made recruitment very difficult.

Edit - our superintendent is very supportive and even traveled from Michigan to STL to watch us compete. However the administration at our high school, many of the teachers, and most of the students show little/no recognition or respect for our team.

[Hgree56]

At our school, it seems the only people who care about our team is the members of the team, our tech teachers, and the principal. That's it and it's really sad to think about.

[Littlepchan]

Our school population almost entirely feeds off the robotics team. Although, there is a reason for this.

In our school we have no regulated sports, music program, or anything that is extra curricular that can't be a club. Also, even if we wanted to support those types of things the school is non-UIL so to bad so sad.

So, that's were Robotics kicks in. In school we are the football team, although we don't come with the attitude :p. Last year, we were cheered out of the door on our way to championships. This year, I can't get people to stop asking about how we are or what we're doing. We also have complete access to our machine shop and have our own private field set-up (on the second floor where in the area no one can use).

We're pretty lucky, and we try to spread what we have to other local teams that need the support.

[Type]

I don't think I have seen the principal at any of our events. At our closest event, some of our former teachers brought their middle school students to come watch but nobody from the high school came or really paid attention. When we qualified for State nobody really cared. When we qualified for world's, people cared a little more this year than last year. This year, the teachers at our virtual Academy and STEM buildings had the live stream going but when we got back, I just heard "I saw you guys online", nobody really congratulated us. Whenever sports teams qualify for state, the school arranges a police escorts to the highway. I know we aren't a sports team but we didn't even get that much recognition for how well we did. A lot of people don't really know who we are. I think until seeing the live streams, a lot didn't know we had a robotics team. The daily announcements don't point it out that greatly.
We have some school support, but barely any. We don't even get a place to meet on campus, which isn't too bad because where we meet is probably nicer than anything the school would ever give us. The nice thing is one or two of my teachers seem to like the robotics team, so after we got back from world's, they gave us more time than normal to make up any work we missed.

[maxnz]

We have been extremely lucky this year, with multiple teachers and students coming to the 10,000 Lakes regional and stopping by our pit to say hi (the principal was unfortunately out of town, otherwise I'm sure she would have come). That was partly due to an all staff email sent out on Friday night inviting teachers to come watch. We are currently pushing for a dedicated build space, due to a school remodel happening in 2017, and so far it seems promising. I can't speak for other years, but from what I've heard, this is our best year in many more ways than just statistically.

[EricH]

We get support... but we also get some stuff we'd rather not have. Example: District allows us to have sole use of a box truck. But... they insist on storing spare tables in the area we use as our meeting area, and we could use more space.


Overall, the support is pretty good, and after we had a reveal event (shortly after bag day, with our practice robot) that happened to be well-attended by teachers and association folks, as well as sponsors, that might even get better.

[Moskowapplepi]

After asking my friends and acquaintances at school I have concluded they care when we do well but are not very interested otherwise. The principal though always loves to hear how we did and likes to go to our events. We are a 4h program that is not affiliated with any school but includes students from 5 schools in 5 towns

[Russell2144]

Not much at all.

Our parents send all school emails while we're at comps telling students and teachers to keep an eye on TBA for us, and the most we ever hear is post comp, a couple teachers walk up to us and ask how we did.

[logank013]

In general, our school's staff has a lot of support for us. I see many 234 signs in random classrooms around the school. I also see a lot of 234 window stickers on teachers' classroom's windows. Surprisingly, I see a lot of Lunacy game pieces around our school and I'm not exactly sure why. We are located in Indianapolis and our principal took the Friday of worlds off in 2015 when we went. He drove to St. Louis to support our team. He also came to our Kokomo competition this year and was seen around our school when we hosted an IN event during our spring break this year. Now our team isn't by any means what students talk about. In general, students at our school don't really talk about any of our sports or academic teams. I know a big chunk of the school knows who we are. Many of our students wear Cyber Blue shirts and talk about the team with other students. Students recognize that. We were also honored last year at our Spring pep rally last year as well. In general people would say they know who we are.

[jimv]

My team is two schools (which are rivals in other sports) so I can't speak about the other school, but my school gives a little recognition to us in the form of news videos including us and announcements when we do well (however they don't mention people from the other school which I find kind of funny). Otherwise, people don't know what we do but tend to be curious until they learn it isn't Battlebots, ask about joining, or say they tried to join but couldn't find the lab.

[abbymarie]

We are minimally cared about at our school. We got a send off for Championships, but they grouped us with all of the other fine arts activities. No one was told about our regional, or about how to cheer us on at Championships.

[planetbrilliant]

It's a work in progress.
Our school still doesn't care that much or acknowledge us, but we're working on it.
We did get to launch t-shirts at a pep rally earlier this year, that was awesome.

[kayelia42]

One of the things that frustrated me the most this past year coming back from regionals is that members of our team weren't willing to represent the team. I sit with a bunch of people on our team during lunch, and when one of the other members wore his team shirt the day we got back from regionals I heard the comment "Why is he wearing that, I want to be done with robotics." I was a freshman on our team, so it was really disheartening to hear these older students that I looked up to badmouthing another teammate in general, let alone for being proud of our team.

[NShep98]

My teams pulls from 3 or 4 different schools (plus likely a discontinuing school-based team starting 2017). Unfortunately, I am not from the school where most of our members are from. At my school, knowledge of our team is limited to our principal from knowing team members that have since graduated, and a handful of teachers and friends of mine.

We are allowed to have segments on the morning news if we ask (getting kids to listen is another story), but otherwise the school is not really obligated to do anything for us, which is one of the downsides to not being affiliated with a school.

[jess_17]

The majority of students at my team's school don't know that we have a robotics team. The school used to put competition dates on the calendar and in homeroom announcements, but they don't even do that anymore. They focus primarily on sports teams and the arts.

When mentioning robotics to my teachers, they always bring up Battlebots or are surprised that we have a team. One asked me if we build the underwater robots.

However, my team is very fortunate to be able to work in such a large space. Our school recently bought some property containing an armory (which they will later tear down to build a pool) and we have been given 4 rooms and a shed to work in, which is a lot of space for our small 14-member team. We also have a large gym floor in the center (used for practice day 2015) which we can use when none of the sports teams are there.

We don't often talk about robotics because, at least in my experience, most people will lose interest. It's hard to understand all of the excitement at competitions and having a time limit of six weeks to build a robot unless you have firsthand experience.

[scott.smith]

In our school, our section of the tech wing has 2 trophy cases with all of our awards, and defining pieces of previous robots. Most people know that there is a robotics club, and they might have announcements if we win a regional or do well at champs. Honestly, I talked to some non-stem people, and they thought that we were all huge losers. They also think that mentors do all of the work(They don't). One of our team members posted in 2010 about pretty much the same thing, and it hasn't changed since then. So we have some school culture change to do.

[Elizabeth Lowe]

This is a fascinating discussion--obviously it's timeless since it's been going on at least since 2010!

If you're anywhere near Michigan, you may want to attend our ROBO-CON Festival on July 23, 2016 in Lapeer, Michigan. This year we're putting together a roundtable discussion involving educators who are also mentors, and encouraging other teachers, administrators and school board members to come out to hear how robotics team involvement affects students academically.

This idea came about after a conversation with an alternative ed teacher who started coaching a rookie team this year (and they did fabulous!). We talked about how motivating it is for the students to compete the robot they built. I want educators to hear from their peers about what a difference robotics makes, and I hope this is a springboard to schools welcoming and encouraging their robotics teams.

We haven't yet set a time for the roundtable discussion, but when we do, we'll post it on the event website at MiRoboCon.com (http://MiRoboCon.com).

[BrendanM]

I'm not actually a student at the school that hosts us (technically the school doesn't host us anyway) but as far as I've been told, the board and administrators as well as some teachers are actually trying to prevent people from finding out about the robotics team.

[SpaceBiz]

I'm not actually a student at the school that hosts us (technically the school doesn't host us anyway) but as far as I've been told, the board and administrators as well as some teachers are actually trying to prevent people from finding out about the robotics team.
I don't see a reason why they would want to do this. Unless the program makes the school look bad, (there are some clubs at my school that do hurt the school image) most schools want students to get involved. And I am unaware of any robotics teams that hurt their school's image.

[Zac Schofield]

From what I've seen at my school, The faculty likes our FRC Team and what it does. They help us out by paying for district event registration and we used to have a shop in our Tech Center. On the whole, the administration generally likes us and supports us. However, At the end of the 2014 season, we surrendered our shop to the school so they could have a "science room" with working gas and water for more science experiments (chemistry, physical science, etc...). It's been two years and the room is technically a science room, and teachers do use it, but with no water or gas, just a few tables in the middle of the room so students cant actually do hands-on experiments in that room. So now our shop is setup in an unused room in the middle school (Which is way smaller than our old shop.). In addition to that, they don't really announce how we did at events like other sports teams.

As for the student aspect of this question, last year there were a bunch of rookies joining the team (We had about 80 kids total, which was about 10% of the school population) and robotics was "the club to join" for the first time I've ever seen. However due to the frustrations of last season and especially this season, our population has thinned to about 60 kids, only half of which are "active" members. This year, the rowing team and other sports were more popular among students, so there as not a whole lot of interest from the students even when we demoed our robot at school assemblies.

Overall, I'd say that school interest has fluctuated considerably over the past few years, but all we can do is try our best and hope that we get new rookies who are hardworking and love robots!

[qscgy]

Outside of the STEM magnet program, most people don't know that we exist. The sports teams get mentioned on the morning announcements whenever they have a game, win or lose, but we never get any recognition, aside from occasional recruiting messages, which all clubs do.

[GeeTwo]

We have pretty decent awareness and support. Anyone who comes in on the east side of the school or heads back to the football stadium knows about us, because we have the largest, best marked trailer of any school organization. We bring the t-shirt launcher to most of the home football games, which is a great recruiting resource and buys lots of good will from both students and administration. We have even had a number of teachers skip teaching on Bayou Friday to play the web feed in class. It also helps that the robotics team usually has at least one member in common with just about every other team and organization on campus.

[cpapplefamily]

Our general population is the least of our worries. Our school is our biggest hurdle. We are currently trying to find an off sight location and become independent.

[xjschwen]

We are luckier than most teams.

Our school district recently (2 years ago) idled the middle school due to declining enrollment. We have full run of 3 class rooms. We have them divided as a metal room with band saws and general chassis build area.

We have a second room referred to as the the wood room... We do most of our wood work and game elements here.

The third room is our software room... It is also the FTC team's main build room.

We also have full run of the library during build season because it has lots of space to setup a half field when needed.

I say our administration fully supports our team with this amount of space to work in. They have even purchased new cad workstations for the team.

However, our team struggles to get more than 10-12 students, which is about 4% of our student population in the grades 9-12. We are currently without faculty member of the school system being on the mentor crew.

We are working hard now to up participation and recruiting new members is a top priority for the team for the first time in a while.

[Hikel team 319]

at our high school graduation this past Friday, Team 319 and the robotics team was mentioned by three different graduation speakers. Guess the general population is fully aware of FRC 319 - Big Bad Bob.

[thomasweese]

Our school has recently begun to have a lot of enthusiasm for the robotics team.

Every student at the school has a robotics t-shirt and I've been told by tons of people that they want to join next year. I'm excited to see if the enthusiasm continues to grow.

[pmattin5459]

Our school's administration is extremely enthusiastic about it. Most students don't really care for it too much, but attitudes are changing, and we hope that, through outreach and an expansion of our team (maybe 30 people right now, though we are recruiting in the next couple of weeks) that we can have much more of an impact on our community.

[pipsqueaker]

Can we perhaps try to avoid resurrecting 7-year-old posts?