Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

School? Support us? Ha! there's a new idea!! :yikes:
I remember at the regional competition when we had a list of sponsors on our robot, our captain said: "Hey! why are they on here? they don't sponsor us!" and pointed to our school name

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Well, let's see, next to nothing, the only ones who are supportive are our janitors (quite a unorthodox source of support might I say), and some of the other science teachers in addition to our sponsor. We get most of our funding from local corps and little businesses and the 2 or 3 fundraisers (not really used to raise funds, but more to "raise awareness", since we make very little from them- sub-$500- for a lot of work). Last year, we wanted to build a shed like the sports that our school sponsors, but the admin shot it down. We attempted to bribe our principal with a XXL team t-shirt specially ordered for his horizontally challenged physique, but that failed. What made it worse was they built a shed thingy in that exact location for some unknown purpose.
I jsut feel like most FRC teams are just undervalued in their schools as opposed to the "state championship baseball team" or the "all conference tennis players" , I wish it was as easy as "raising awareness" in the community to get more support, sometimes, people are just indifferent....

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

my school does NOT support our FRC team at all.

even though we are a rookie, and may be going to nats...

the school recently decided to help pay for us if we go to atlanta.

but during build season, we were given a classroom, denied entrance to the workshop, and kicked out at five o clock most days.


and, an interesting conversation between me and a girl in my class when i was telling everyone about what the team was.

her-"ew....robotics?...NERD!" *laughs...gets 3/4 of the class laughing*
me-*stands up* YEAH. I'M SMART. TOO BAD YOU AREN'T.
her-well....yeah. *walks away*

i thought to myself...
SCORE:
ROBOTICS-1
SKEPTICS-NEGATIVE THREE.


our school also refers to us as a "club" denying us priveleges such as...oh, i don't know....FUNDING?

and our "club advisor" is not even a science/math/computer teacher.


not very fun.

hopefully better times next year.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Barely...pretty much not at all.

Our school is mostly about football and speech team. Basketball is a close third. Robotics...half the people at my school don't even know there is a robotics team.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Today our school said WildStang on the announcements. :yikes: hehe

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Usually, there is really no say in how much we would get every year. Depending on the funds our school/district has will determine how much we will receive. One thing I am very glad about is that we're still able to travel and have a competitive robot regardless of how the situations are.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

The plan is that you have as many members on your team join the other clubs. This way robotics has a hand in everything. Then it will also be easier to pull strings when you need it the most. Other clubs can always make "donations" to robotics; all you need is a little more than half of that club be in robotics then you got it made.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Not very much unfortunately. Our Rookie year, we were not even recognized as a school team and were pushed off to the side as only an afterschool activity. Luckily, we had teachers and mentors that cared enough to sponsor and push our team to the top.

We are an IT school and yet our own principal dislikes technology and does little to support our extensive IT facilities such as our ~400 3GHZ computers that the IT students and teachers devote time to maintain. Robotics originally was supported by only the IT coordinator and the IT department teachers along with students. After our RotY win at Championships, our school has given us a much better status of a fully recognized team, as well as our own display wall and expanded usage of facilities.

Hopefully this next season we'll enjoy the same privileges of other school teams and get the recognition we worked so hard for last season.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Our school has been alright about supporting us this past year. It was our first year in the school, so hopefully things will be better next year.

We have access to 4 rooms to work in. A computer lab, classroom, auto shop, and a room connected to the classroom with tables and stuff. We also have access to the gym and practice room when other sports teams aren't already using them.

The faculty support is decent, but student support is pretty low. We put the jaws of the wrestling team to the floor when we were practicing, though. :D

Edit: Julia Magoolia reminded me of Intro to Engineering class we got set in to the 2007/2008 year cirriculum.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

actually, this does not fare well for all other clubs.

For example, there are a few students on our Robotics team that are also in our Festival Jazz Band. In 2005, there was a trip to Boston for the Berklee Jazz festival. this festival was the same day as the Saturday of the UTC regional. Being the driver of 177 I opted to go to the UTC regional instead. however, I did not have a happy jazz band director after that one.

Doing a lot of clubs is always a good thing, but with robotics being such a big time commitment, sometimes there are scheduling conflicts. I already know that we have a band trip to Virginia the same week as the Championships in 2007... :confused:

Some teachers are really supportive of the robotics team because of what it does for students, and how much of a learning experience it is inside and outside of the classroom.

On the other hand, some teachers are not supportive and think that schoolwork should always come first and academics is more important.

As a whole, our school is not very supportive of the robotics team, yet there are induviduals who support us a lot. Our school's principal makes sure that he goes to the Hartford regional every year on his own time to see us compete. He also came to see us off before we left for Atlanta and watched the web cast as much as he could. This kind of support is personal and I know our team appreciates it when he is there.

Because there are a lot more students on our team now than in the years past, we have made a bigger impact in our school. And after every competition that we attended, there was an announcement over the intercom giving the student body an idea of what we have done. Unfortunately, we started to get a lof of schoolwide attention because of the fact that we won competitions, not because of what we were doing.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I'd like to second Kim's spectacular argument. I too, had a musical conflict. As a result, I too did not have a very happy band director.

However, I think there's a greater message here: you, as a team member, should not decree what extracurricular activities your teammates participate in. Throwing them into other clubs will not help your image, it will only postpone the work that you need to do to improve it. Do not postpone that work. This is one situation in which you can destroy your team through an effort that you consider a shortcut.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

We in Warren Ohio, though our School System is constantly near dead last on our states district report card, Have many great programs that those score do not account for, Such as the international baccalaureate program, A very excellent band program -which I was also part of- that made it to Macy's Thanks Giving Day Parade in 2004, and the point of this thread our Delphi E.L.I.T.E Robotics team, which over the years has gained a great deal of respect from our community, community leaders especially our board of education members(some of which started the team it's self in 1998),even our principal(ex- now) has come to our regional before, we even have a public broadcast TV show every Thursday during the season put on by our WSCN Communication Class to update the community on our doings at regional and so forth. So from the administrative side of things we are beloved, But our student body still thinks we are odd or not worth there time. They often ask me why is it that you spend so many hours after school IN school, my only answer is for them to join the team and find out. As for the teachers it's a mixed bag, some, like the band teachers and most of the science and math department love the program and understand the goals it is trying to achieve, the others accept it but dislike that 50 or so students spend more time in the shop than in the class room. also as for conflicting schedules, such as Between band and robotics, Believe me I know, over 4 years I was able to go to 12 regional and 4 national events...basically every where my team went I was there...and I had the time to keep up with the music, the marching drills and the Concert, marching and jazz band events, while also receiving many awards in the process and becoming Trumpet section Leader My senior year. It is possible, it takes loyalty the first 2 years and developing and understanding of Schedules the last 2.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I’d have to agree with what my fellow 166ian said. Our school was nice to us, offered us rooms, and even let us in on the weekends, which was a small fight. And as well as the wrestling team we kicked the cheerleaders out of the gym for a bit. Though they were a bit less nice about it. To further the conversation I am in a TON of things other than first. Including anywhere from sports to theatre, and while id say the school is slightly more supportive of track, (much to my dismay I’m more of a FIRSTian) Id say that FIRST gets more attention than theatre of the math team. I balance the whole schedule by blocking my build season life for first, and keeping specific dates open for fundraisers. Several kids in our band, somehow, work great in first; one of our team leads is even in band. So I’d say that first and other activities work well together you just need to work with them.

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

I must third this. Our choral ensemble is awful at coordinating with HOT's schedule. This last year, for example, I had to miss many choreography sessions and dress rehearsals. The end result was me not being able to be in a few numbers. But I like FIRST better so it was okay :o

Re: How much does your school support your FIRST Team?
 

Although 1251 would like to see more financial support from the school, our school does help us out in many other ways. They let us use our pretty new Tech lab to work in and base our whole operation out of. Since our school is a tech training center, we have access to a machine shop, welding shop and a pretty amazing drafting lab which we don't pay for. Oh one more thing Toyota just happens to have a auto collision repair shop at the school, which comes in very handy for making the robot look good. 90% of the schools staff and teachers are supportive of the program enough to donate there classrooms and time to give us support/ resources. No complaints from me during my three years on the team so far.

-Drew