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

most kids in our school don't even know there is a tech wing!!! :ahh:

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

We're one of maybe three teams in the school that actually wins with any consistency, so we get some respect. It doesn't hurt that the TV classes who do the morning announcements include a lot of MORT kids...
The administration loves us because we win and because we send kids to college. The principal comes to the NJ regional every year on Friday. He was pleased as punch when we came home from Palmetto with the blue banner. I think that it's mostly because of him that we have free range of the entire basement (shops/CAD) every night.
Fellow students know we exist and they know we're pretty good, but I don't think that most people really know what we're about. They know the name and they see the video montages on the morning announcements and they see that we always come home with something but no one knows the game, the rules, or the philosophy behind FIRST. "Is it like battlebots?"

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

The school does not consider us as a team. They say we are a "club" because there is no junior or varsity sections. They will put us on the announcements if we tell them, or at least when the vice principal does the announcements. And none of the administration came to the regional at all this past year, at least some of the teachers did though.

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

Lets put it this way, the school is our only sponsor. And being that its only our second year in compititon, we aren't as known as our schools biggest club(as of last year), our play production company. This year we were known by many more people than last year just through friends, annoucements of how we did at regionals, and a very brief appearance at our school pep rally last year. Because of people in the communtity and in our school have taken notice of our achievements, we are getting more support. We just started our VEX team this year and are currently in the process of maybe, (big maybe) trying to help another high school nearby start a VEX or even FRC team for this or next season, along with beginning to develop FLL and JFLL teams in the grade schools in our district.

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

Team 1403 is extremley lucky to have the full support of our school district and community. Our school generously pays for 2 regionals and the championship event. The school board, the vice principles, the super intendent of Mongomery Township Schools, the Mayor etc. have been very active in helping us form relationships with local companies and the community. Because of our team, our school has formed a new engineering department with many robotics and vex related classes. Our school was very generous and accomodating when we were planning Monty Madness. It is amazing to see what persistence and a positive attitude can help you achieve.

At first when we started, our school was against the idea of having a FIRST team. During our first year, we did as much as we could to get our administrators out to the regionals and after they saw what we did it they were hooked. After much exposure and after they saw the product of the program, they threw full support behind team 1403. Believe me, this was no easy task but we did our best to get it done. Try, try, try until you succeed. It may take a while, but you will eventually gain the recognition you deserve. I encourage everyone to try to expose your schools, local communities etc. to the world of FIRST. You may be surprised to see how their view's may change. It's not an easy thing to do, but then again nothing worthwhile is supposed to be easy. Good luck to everyone.

-Aroon Amarnani

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

Our team is very fortunate to have a supporting school and community. In most schools, Football is the big thing, but in our school Robotics is probably tied at #1 along with soccer (Only two teams in the school that consistanly win anything). I think our biggest asset is our relationship with the faculty. Whenever we need anything, getting into the school during late hours, last minute supplies, or even help throwing suprise parties, the faculty has always been there to help out. In the community, we have a good relationship with the mayor, town counsil, local congressman, and the state legislature.

As for the team part, I guess we are officially a team because we got Varsity Letters. :p

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

Yeah. About this time last year, we moved into the school.

Since then we have gotten a considerable amount of support from the school. We have two teachers supporting us. The tech-ed department head got us more space in another storage closet, and another teacher is going to be doing basic training in Pro-E.

Our school just administrated a no eating policy due to several kids who are deathly allergic to nuts and just entered the school. No food can be eaten outside of the cafeteria and other specified locations. Hopefully we'll be able to eat in the classroom we work in.

I feel like the school knows about us now that we actually moved into the school. Before, when we worked at our sponsor's facility, the school hardly knew of us.

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

I think that over the past few years our school support has gone up.
Last year our new principal came to Peachtree and Championships.
The principal before that came to Peachtree and Championships my Freshman and Sophmore Year.

Last year was a real treat. Before we went to Auburn for the South's BEST competition for BEST robotics, our basketball coach learned of this and asked if it was okay to give us a little talk before hand. He is kinda a big deal to most of us (he coached the east in the McDonalds all star game and has won 4 state championships in 4 years).
I think over the past 3 years, robotics has grown from one of those clubs that peopl look at like "eh, they are ok, kinda cool maybe" to "wow, these guys really do some pretty awesome stuff"
We also get some money from our Magnet Program's foundation for outreach puposes.
This is a new building being built at our school and the school is dedicating 950 sq feet to us.

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

Everyone at our school supports the robotics team. Even if they're not on the team, lunch and chapel announcements get a lot of enthusiasm. Robotics really gets a lot of promotion from teachers and students. Robotics falls at the perfect time of year for us because the school musical is at the same time (the past 2 years) and so anyone who doesn't want to do artsy stuff can join robotics. The good thing about Trafalgar is that if you want to do robotics you could still do swimming or gymnastics, and if you're not on the "technical" team you can do volleyball. This way people can join robotics and still do other things. Either way, my friends all think I'm really "cute" for how enthusiastic about robotics. My best friends even came out to the Toronto Regional last year to support the team. In the halls, people congratulate us on our accomplishments or wish us luck at the future competitions. In all aspects our school fully supports the team.

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

After many years, (this will be our ninth year) support of our team within our school(s) and school district has generally been on the rise. The Board of Education for our town is now one of our two main sponsors. For many years (actually up until these past two to three years), our team was largely unknown among the school, faculty, and student population. But starting in 2005, we began to see our support within our schools rise. It started slowly and it took a lot of effort, but in the end it's certainly beginning to pay off.

We started with having our team appear at every open house, student orientation, etc. with our team and some of our robot(s) to demonstrate. With the addition of Vex robots, and the ability of any random person walking by to drive a robot, was certainly a boost. We also succeeded in having a link to our team website put right near the top of the website of one of our schools. At the moment, our team is featured fairly prominent on the homepage of my school's website. (This also happens to the default homepage for every single computer in our school.)

Our team website has certainly helped a lot as well, as a great source of information for students, faculty, and sponsors. Another great marketing tool we found, which may be hard for some teams to come up with, is having someone ride a Segway at team demonstrations. This is a great way to spark the curiosity of a lot of people, and when they come over, let them ride it for a minute or two, while giving them a nice little spiel about your team. From experience, it is quite successful for recruiting new members.

Also, don't just limit yourself to your school. Take your robot out to a fair, or a parade, or any kind of festival. Make a name for your team in not only the schools, but also in your community. Team 228 scored a massive front page article on our team just days before the 2006 UTC New England Regional this year. (The actual article took up about 70% of the front page, and quite to our surprise we learned that the accompanying image of our 2005 student FVC coach and the robot was one of the most popular photo reprint requests ever in their 150 year history!)

The student population among our three schools is becoming more and more award of our team, in a positive sense of course. We've started a much more aggressive marketing campaign, with signs and banners in the hallways, more morning announcements, and prominent places on the school website. Almost every student knows robotics exists now.

In the near future, we are going to directly talk to the math, science, and technology departments to send "letters of recommendation" to some students as an "invitation" to join the robotics team based on their academic performance in the areas of math, computers, and/or tech ed. Currently, several other clubs at our school use this method for recruiting members, like the Youth and Government club (which I'm also a major part of), and they have a high success rate. (My computer programming teacher already volunteered to do this with her classes.)

The last hurdle we are facing is recruiting additional faculty members to help with our team. Since robotics usually involves a lot more commitment that an average club, but lacking the status of a varsity team, it's hard to recruit new faculty advisors. But hopefully this year, we will draft up the necessary paperwork needed to raise our team from "club" status to a lettering "team" and present it to our Board of Education.

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

Our school is big on the main sports, football(of course), lacrosse, and many others. Compare our robotics team(which has been quite productive/successful) to many of the big sports teams in our school and we are like a dwarf to a giant! Over the years we have gained respect and notariaty. We have started to do demostrations at pep-rallies. I believe it also depends on the size of the school, the larger the school the harder it is to gain support because of the many other events, teams, clubs, and groups that occur in the school. The smaller the school the easier it would be to gain support because you have to reach a smaller group(if i am wrong in this assumption please enlighten me).

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

our school district made an addition to the budget to help sponser us. they also helped us get to the championship in 05.

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

My high school (which usually dominates in sports like lacrosse and ice hockey) has been strongly behind our team. Because Chesapeake is so close to our school, faculty and administrators outside the robotics program have made it on a regular basis to the regional. In fact, the high school's administrators were the ones who got us involved first when Das Goat (165) was formed in 1998. The physics teacher who runs the team did not like it because it was not cohesive enough and split off a year or two later.

Our county Board of Education has been behind the team since 2005, even though they don't sponsor the team directly. They have been willing at points to foot the entire bill to get us (err. the team) to the FIRST Championship if we won.

The team does not have its own class, but it does have its own computer lab in the science wing and its own shop in the tech-ed side (which is shared by the few tech-ed classes that are still left at the school (because most are at the vo-tech school right across the street)) equipped with soldering equipment, several drill presses (including a brand new one), and a storage room full of supplies and tools. Even though the administration changed right after I left, the new one still strongly supports the team because he sees all the progress (and other positive stuff) it has done.

If I am not mistaken, in the midst of a successful season for the football team (a winning record for the first time in a long while), the 2006 robot actually became a part of the homecoming game: showing that it is now truly a fabric of the school.

It's actually ironic that there is so much support for the FIRST program here (and so many sponsors willing to step on board) because the parental community overall is not that involved with the school.

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

Our school now wants to take a year off from the "club" of not building or competing just so they can re-plan the entire team. So right now, we are looking at leaving the school if we cant win them over.

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

Our school does not even know we exist. Most students in the school I would say don't know there is even a robotics team. We had a class, but that was taken away since our school down sized. Now we are just a club and no longer an established school program. We deserve more respect and credit since we actually succeed in what we do, but our school seems to spend most of their time, money and attention towards our failing football team.