getting your team involved with your school
 

Dose any one have any ideas toward getting your team more involved with your school. I come from a school where the F.I.R.S.T. team is little known. Any ideas would be great.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

If I understand correctly, you are in need of members and support from the school (you said "getting your team more involved with your school"). Or if you mean, 'what can my team do to help the school,' disregard what I'm about to note. Here are a few ideas, most of which we've done:

• If you have a website, make it known
• Put up posters
• Get the team on the air (i.e. morning announcements) for membership and results of competitions, etc.
• Make it known what you're doing when fundraising at your school
• Have everyone wear uniforms one day to raise awareness
• Hold a demonstration at an assembly or in a public area at lunch or after school with your robot and some screens to show animations, etc.
• Get your principal involved
  
  
  
  

Some of these may seem obvious, but you might be surprised how many teams don't do this.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

yeah you got it right...we thought of these but wernt sure how well they would work. they work well at your school?

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

northend-

I can't speak for other NH schools, but I know that Souhegan High School and its' robotics team have a very disjointed relationship. through broken funding promises and only small if nonexistent interest in the team, team 138 Entropy has learned that the school is not the place to go for support or attention.

this year marks the first time the principal of our school and some students watched a couple matches... our program has been around since 1994.

that's right, 10 years and this is the first time ever that the school wanted anything to do with the FIRST team.

...and we managed to be the runner-up team in the championship (BAE regional)

this is why it is important for NH teams to do well in the future because otherwise, I can garuntee that this will not change unless we start bringing home some trophies :(

...we may want to work out some independent meet for NH teams to generate interest locally...

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

i can relate to your teams troubles. i like your idea of "we may want to work out some independent meet for NH teams to generate interest locally". I think that would be benificial. I cannot say however that bringing home trophies will increas involvment, at least it has not at central.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

Thats probably one of the best things you can do.

Also, if your school has a close circuit TV show/announcements try geeting movies of the competition on it. Words cannot do any FIRST robotics competiton justice.

ie. Telling a normal person about your robot going over some ramp and knocking over plastic boxes. Now, that same person seeing it happen is total different.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

that would be a good idea if people actually watched what was put on the t.v. Its nice to know that other teams have a rough time involving thier school as well. At least were not alone.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

only verbal announcements at SHS I'm afraid.

also, northend-

every year the town of Amherst allows the robotics team to take part in the 4th of july parade... maybe we should hold an outdoors event (just practice and such) with a plywood practice field at Vista Foods or see if we can do something at the food court in the MNH... something that will grab people's attention where they least expect it. that may not help the school involvement directly, but it will generate questions for the school. if they see people outside of our schools are interested in our programs, our schools will be forced to at least inform themselves about us in order to answer the deluge of questions.

...joint PR ventures are goooood...

anyways, let me know what you think. ill pass this idea off to marketing team, and have your people talk to my people lol. see you guys in atlanta!

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

see you guys in atlanta...wish we were going but we will not be. Our mentor Mr. Kelso will be going but as for the rest of the team (as far as i know) we will not be attending. i think your idea of a public "demo" would be good. it would really help our problem out. we will have to get in touch to discuss this.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

We are having the same problem. We started off with a team of 80+ people, 1 teacher and 1 mentor. Now, we're like 6 to 8 people depending on the day. All our public relations people quit. All our finance people quit. All our webdesign and animation people quit. In the end we were left with a very very small core team who had to do the entire project. So we found ourselves spending some 60hrs/wk (or more) during the 6 week period. With school and homework and robotics, I didn't get very much sleep at all during the six weeks. I would've loved to have a website or animation. Our core members are capable but there's just so much to do for 6 students and 2 adults.

People signed up to the team thinking they could come in play around with the stuff and leave at 4pm or eariler (less than an hour after class). Now, we're having a hard time finding people interested in the team next year. 5 of the 6 people on the core team are graduating. Due to lack of PR, our finances are down to nearly 0. Anybody else ever experience a similar problem? All our grads are really commited though, we're all willing to come back to mentor next year.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

we have a team of roughly 20-25 kids. we do have alot of trouble getting kids to join the team. i know what you are talking about when kids want to leave early. it just make everone that stays work harder. i personally think that having a smaller team is better. (no offence to thoes bigger teams out there) with a smaller team everone knows everone extreamly well. also everone has someting to do. you do not need to split the work of one person so that 5 people have somting to do. all i can tell you is to try to get people comming to your school next year intrested. your team is in a rough spot man. good luck

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

oh man... now how are we going to take back the top from West high?! :confused:

you know what, we should really get the Aztechs and St. Thomas in on this too

the more teams we have, the more of a spectacle it will create... especially if we are able to put 4 bots on the practice field at once. and who knows- maybe we'll pick up a company sponsor or two! I don't know about you guys, but one of the biggest problems amherst has had is the drastic underfunding... in one way its good because the students do 100% of the fabrication (that they can legally do... you need a certificate to operate the bridgeport)

but it gets really annoying to have to cut corners to save time and money that we don't have


fad- if you guys need anything we can help you out with, do not hesitate to ask us. The beauty of FIRST is that we can, and do help each other often. we know what its like to be in your situation, so we can commiserate. We won't think twice about helping you if you ask

its just the way we are, eh?
good luck

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

somehow i believe that we will be able to get that position back from west, eventually. yeah the more teams in nh getting together the better. i dont know if we would get a sponcer out of it, but it couldent hurt at all to try. are you guys going to river rage. (that might be the oppurtunity to take back the top, lol)

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

Yea, it seems like dedicated motivated students are a rare breed these days. I'm thinking of going around the undergrad math and science classes and show them pictures and discuss robotics. We have a lot of people from our school going to see us at the Canadian Regional this year.

Fundraising in the school is very hard. With so many things competing for their money at the school, people are unwilling to support something they're not involved in anymore.

EDIT: I'd like to add that we wouldn't have a bot done this year if it wasn't for team 188. These guys are great. They helped us out with our gearbox design, and they gave us a lot of parts at the last minute. Team 188 is gracious professionalism at its finest.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

138 is gunning for them at nats ;) though they did win fair and square, what kept our bot from beating them in the finals was one stripped gear...

we're getting spares this time lol.

we don't know about river rage yet, though i will be pushing hard for it in our team meetings. those independent meets look oh-so-fun

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

you hit the nail on the head with that one. i think every team has a hard time finding dedicated members as well as money (most teams at least)

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

it would be good to see your team at river rage. (battling for the top) and good luck with the striped gear, hope that it dosent happen again

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

Have you tried approaching school officials about your team becoming part of or affiliated with the school? Also are you looking for/expecting funding for your team from the school board? I don't want to come across as negative (my team also has it's own issues concerning the school) but I included this link http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...t=26255&page=3 because as soon as your team is affiliated with others things can become sour. You must decide how much of an affiliation you want first. To get them involved there are excellent points in some of the previous posts. You may also ask if you could demo the robot at a Board of Ed meeting or invite school officials to YOUR robot meetings. Let them know and possibly see how much goes into building a robot and how much the team means to your members. Make sure they also see not only all the effort that goes into physically building a robot but all the fundraising and PR that also goes with sustaining a team. Don't forget to play footage of actual comps whether your robot is in it or not so they see what the idea of FIRST is.

Good luck,
Jason

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

we are a part of our high school..that is not the problem, we are just trying to get more kids intrested in what we do. I know what you mean however about the sour experiences that can occur. they make things more complicated.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

I think it all boils down to convincing teachers to convince students that this is a good educational program. Our team is hoping that our situation changes completely once we actually compete and the students and teachers see our robot in action.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

yes. that is the problem. unless the teacher has been introduced to first, they think of it as a way to get out of school. which is not the case. i do more work at a first comp. than i do during school. getting the teachers involved would really help get students involved

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

Ok, I misunderstood exactly who you were trying to get involved. Are any of the teachers involved with the team? Have they mentioned the team to thier classes? Does your school have any sort of a technology program/classes? This is an excellent area to talk to students about the team with since it has to do with technology and where you're most likely to find interested students. Computer classes are good too since you may find students interested in programing. The main thing is to get the word out whether you team members talk to the students, the teachers mention it, you demo the robot at lunch, put up posters, distribute fliers about the team and I can go on and on but I think you get the point. Like I said, get the word out and make the team known.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

we have two teachers that help our team out. but in a school where the students out number the teachers by an extreamly large ammount, two teachers is not alot to spread the word

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

While I am glad to read we are not the only team that has issues. I have a few ideas that our team is doing. Last year was our rookie year, with about 5-6 dedicated members, and we knew we could not "take it to the next level" without getting more students involved.

I took students with me to the 10th Grade English teacher in our magnet program. She just happens to do Lego Robotics in her technical writing class. We took the robot down, as well as some students and gave a presentation.

We also put up posters, advertised on the school annoucements, and had a booth at club rush.

To get support from the school, we tood the adivsor to SGA with us to a regional, and now she is hooked. She has a lot of contacts within the school, and really wants to help us out.

We are also hosting a post-season competition this year in November and are donating 20% of our profits to the school for the Principal to use at his discreation.

There is a large amount of PR that has gone to making us grow, but it can be done. I wish everyone a lot of luck in all of their endervars.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

good idea with the donating money thing...everone loves money, so you would love the person your getting it from

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

I can completely relate to your situation. We have just one teacher dedicated to this program. He teaches senior math and physics courses. He has spoken already to all the math and science teachers about spreading the word but it's only getting to a small number of students. We've spoken to the computer science teachers to get them talking to their teachers about the program as well. Our principal fully supports the program but student and teacher support could've been better. I believe we'll get to more students if we go around the classes and talk to them about robotics. We will probably be targeting the math, science and computer science classes from Grade 9 to Grade 11. Our school doesn't have a machine shop anymore and therefore there haven't been any major tech classes in the last 2 years.

However, this year, we made quite an impression on the parent council and the principal and vice-principals. They are very interested in seeing the program succeed. Next year, we may have a lot of mentors through parents and FIRST alumni. I'm planning on going into software engineering or computer engineering next year but I'm very much interested in coming back after class to mentor as are most of the other grads on the core team. Really, our entire core team is a group of prospective engineering students.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

our mian mentor teacher physical science and physics. he also tells his classes but we see no result. we have a car class, but i do not believe that the student in that class would be intrested in what we do. i am definitally gonna hafta bring up getting more teachers involved

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

small steps and build
ALWAYS say thank you for what you have/get
NEVER speak poorly about what you don't have/get (even though you could)
Involved teachers/staff are a key
presentations
Win an Award? Get yourself on the school board agenda and ask for a moment to thank the school and community for their support.
It's funny, but if you thank them first, support will start to come.
It'll always be slower/less than you want, but keep building positively
Put a promo video together? Give copies to administration and school board members.
After they get an idea, ASK them to be in your promo video and talk about how FIRST has influenced the school and community
Frequent email updates to whole community, school admin and staff, sponsors, etc about the progress of your team - all year round - explain the activities in terms of how they are educationally beneficial ...
mention student names and achievement when it happens ...
keep going
don't stop
Every time you think you have no support send a positive message and tell the whole community and school you couldn't do it without them.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

great ideas, thank you much, that promo video would be a good way to get teachers not normally involved, involved. I never thought of thanking people in advance. I guess it would make them feel guilty and make them support us more

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

are you a politics major? ;)

I should slap myself for not thinking with that lens... especially because I've already started my college education (as a high-school senior) in that major.

but yeah.. our mentors are BAE systems employees, a parent or two, and an editor for Yankee magazine who spend a lot of time helping train the students and help brainstorm ideas for the bot.

we literally get *NO* support from our school, save for the allowance of using the school name to enter the competition.

but who knows? maybe that will change next year since the principal seemed to enjoy watching some matches at the regional. It's really too bad that I won't be around to see it happen... though I probably will become a mentor soon.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

that's the phrase of the day!! AAAAAAAAAGGGHH!!! /pee-wee

I've been asking for software help to make a promo video, but nobody seems willing to help yet :confused:

and I already have some really cool music to put behind it too...

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

Yup, very good suggestions. I think we are on the right track to get the support we need for next year, but we were off to a rocky start this year. It was partly because we were a rookie team and it took us a while to figure things out. I'd like to point out that this team was started out by students with support from the one teacher and the school principal. We had found out about FIRST robotics from team 188 for the most part. We did know that a program like this did exist but we were eager to start the team when we saw Team 188's website and gallery. We spoke to members from the team. In fact our teacher advisor used to teach at Woburn (Team 188's school). Again, I'd like to thank Team 188 for their support.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

i think that there might be some kids on my team that might want to make a promo vid for us...now i just have to suggest it.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

RoteAugen:
Promo video isn't that difficult. What software? Maybe we can help. A digital video camera with a cheap remote mic works well for interviews of team members and mentors. Drop in footage/stills of mentoring, competitions, LEGO league,etc and a solid five minute video is easy...

Get those BAE mentors recognized by your board memebers. Make certificates of thanks for them. Get a story in the local paper or in BAE's newsletter - then send the newsletter to the school board and admin.

Get a teacher to figure out one motor calculation for you? Give em a certificate and email the world thanking them for technical assistance.

northendchopper:
It's not about guilt at all. It's about making people feel valued and important. Self esteem isn't just for students.

You are working on changing the culture. This is supposed to be difficult. You need to honor ALL PEOPLE where they are currently "at" before you could ever hope to have them think even a little bit differently.

Have fun.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

something amazing happened this morning:
my school finally recognized the FIRST team on its website.

it even mentions 131 northend!

here it is

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

My heart soared reading your post and seeing it on their site.

Progress!!!

Keep it up cuz that kind of progress helps other schools begin to change their culture, and recognize/want robotics' teams more.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

I know I've posted this somewhere else but can't remember which strand...Anyway, we got more teachers involved out of sheer desperation but it had an unexpected benefit. We have one teacher and a teacher needs to be present during the entire build season. That's 47 long evenings/or days. So the students wrote a plea letter, spoke at a faculty meeting and asked for teachers to sign up for 3-4 hours to chaperone so this teacher could go home and have a life. They just had to be there. They could grade papers or whatever. So we had English,French, art, math, music, science, etc teachers sign up. And they were amazed at what they saw. This year we asked them to write a couple of sentences in a log. And they wrote pages of testimonials. Now much more of the school (but we still have work to do to reach more)understands what a commitment this project is and what a dedicated group this is. They now can help spread the word. Hope this helps. oh yes, EVERYONE, and I mean everyone who helps our team for 1 minute or 100 hours gets a thank you letter. Every teacher who helped got a letter. Every parent. Every sponsor.
Another story, we approached Sam's Club last summer for sponsorship. We wanted gift cards to use for food and supplies. We took a great pic of the team at the MD State Fair. We digitally wrote "thank you Sam's Club" and held it in the picture. Actually it was originally a pizza box from another sponsor. Wiped out the pizza and added sam's club. Sam's Club was hesitating about giving us sponsorship. I showed them the photo. They IMMEDIATELY whipped out the gift cards. Bingo. It worked for a lot of sponsors. :) :) :)

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

We don't have teachers this year, but woo'd one to Phoenix that is paying off for our team much like yours. He couldn't stop talking about it at teacher's meeting, is trying to get us into pep rally. Now he's thrilled we "need" him at So Cal regional.

Meanwhile we've woo'd an educational advisor to go with us to nationals. I suspect he'll be a huge asset - he's a great guy.

We too reward any and every donation of time, money, in kind donations. We have a local pizza guy, for instance, who does a huge 48 piece giant pizza. He loved getting a letter with pic after each pizza, and requested it when I didn't mention it one time.

I've learned that rewarding them, means I don't have to remind them who we are come build season when I suddenly need FOOD!

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

Same with my school. My American Goverment teacher had 5 of 47's students who are in his class come up to the front of the room and we had to tell the class what we did over the weekend, and somebody ask us what do we actually do and we told them that we build a robot. The only people in the school who know what we do are the teachers, the other school staff, and the students on the team.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

well at least you have 47 members. we not only have a problem letting the teachers know of our program, but also we have trouble with getting new members to join. so i figure if we get teachers more involved, make a promo vid, and some more demos we might be able to get what i am looking for

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

We don't have 47 memebers. We only have about 27 students. But the team always changes every year with the number of people who join.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

That's what I like to hear! :) It's exactly what I (and my team) needed to hear right now. This is the first year I had to deal with the school board and needless to say, even though I try to keep an open mind, I was left with a sour taste. It's encouragement like that that we need at times.


[quote] Redhead Jokes
My heart soared reading your post and seeing it on their site.

Progress!!!

Keep it up cuz that kind of progress helps other schools begin to change their culture, and recognize/want robotics' teams more.
[Quote Redhead Jokes


I can't improve on what Cheryl said. This is one of the things my team is striving for---reconition. As a matter of fact my team has a meeting tonight with the board of ed. Hopefully we'll make some progress.


[quote]RoboMom007
We have one teacher and a teacher needs to be present during the entire build season [quote]RoboMom007


Same with us, we also have to have a teacher present anytime we use the building. We have two teachers involved with our team and this year we got a few others to show up some of the nights. Part of this was due to one of the main teachers (and the main team contact) being out most of the six weeks due to surgery (this is also why I took a more active role of my teams behind the scenes day to day functions this year instead of devoting my time entirely on the robot). We're hoping that at least one or two take interest next year. Also as Jenny mentioned, having more teachers involved takes some of the burden off the others.

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

wow medical problems causing problems with others as well. our main engineer broke his wrist. he was unable to help build for some time due to the medicene he was on. these unforseen problems only make the team stronger.

27 team members is a good number.. we have somting like 20, but in that 20 you have the core team of 10 or so. it is that core that if you lost you would never finish. I wonder if the larger teams also have a small core team the devote the most.

(yeah it breifly mentions us...better then nothing :cool: )

Re: getting your team involved with your school
 

All of you seem to have more students than us, we have 10-15 students with 5-7 who make the core team...

I heard somewhere that FIRST gives you a recruiting video if you order one, anyone know where I can find it?