How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Hey!

We are working with our high school to recognize our robotics team more. We were wondering in which ways other schools recognize their FIRST teams. Do they give letters or anything like that?

If you could respond it would be really helpful

Thanks!

-Cici

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Novi High School and Frog Force has had a long lasting relationship.

Novi considers Robotics as a varsity sport, and properly gives out varsity letters to students on the Robotics team. Our Season is always being updated by out school's T.V., newspaper, and radio broadcasting departments. Out Art department even made sure to include the FIRST logo on our school mural, which represents everything out school stands for.

We are blessed to be able to work in our school's tech wing so students can come and check up on how the robot is doing throughout the season. Novi provides us with a showcase to show off our awards and accomplishments. We are even able to bring in our robots to Sci-Fi and Physics classes and add to the curriculum.

Lastly, it’s cool to see how much our school has changed because of our team. At Novi, you can now take classes on almost every part of the robot making process (Computer Programming, 3-D CAD, Materials Processing, ect..). What’s even cooler is a few years back our team began our "Frog Green Initiative" to promote going green within our community, and now you can recycle paper and plastic in every classroom at our school.

Those are some things you guys can think about when it comes to how you want your team to be a part of your school!

Good luck with the 2011 season!

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Cici,

I did a search for 'varsity letters' and this link lists all the threads that has stuff about varsity letters and a lot of stuff about school support. You could do a search for 'school support' and see if any other threads come up that aren't in this link.

This is a good topic and, as you can see, there has been a lot of discussion about it in ChiefDelphi. Schools weigh in very differently in their support of FIRST/teams/STEM initiatives/FRC as sport/the importance of math, science, and technology in our current educational systems/intelligence/teachers/shop space... :)

Jane

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

We are treated as near-celebrities by much of the town! Parade, fire/police escort back into town after winning FLR, pep rallies, etc, etc.

Our trophies (some of them) grace the main display cases, and if we buy a second Blue Banner, they will hang it in the gymnasium with all of the sports banners.

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

we are are in a school that is big into sports so most people don't even know we have a team until we host a compitition, the school doesn't help fund us at all, refuse to let us have a robotics class every year even after we have done all of the paper work, this is the frist year they have let us a yearbook picture without a fight, and the only place we have to display our trophies is in a small case at the far back corner of our school which we must share with the ROV team

so any one have ideas to help us

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Step 1: Get a blue banner.

Step 2: Wave it everywhere until your School Board acknowledges your existence.

We haven't gotten to Step 1 yet, unfortunately.

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

getting a blue is hope this year so we can hang it in the gym next to all of the black and gold sports banners

the school board isn't our problem they love us but the itself school refuses to care no matter what we do

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Inspire by example. Do the best you can, and advertise what it is you are doing to the community. When the community cares, the school will care. (Not everyone in the school of course, but as an aggregate).

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Our team tries to make as many videos showcasing our team as we can so we can at least get airtime on our school's news.

Because of these videos, the team is decently well known to the students and some of the tecnological teachers, but i doubt most of the administration even knows of our exsistence.

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Our team isn't actually through our school. We're a community team that has kids coming from 6 different high schools. We focus more on getting the community to appreciate robotics and the educational value it has. We have found that receiving the appreciation of the community is sometimes more important then the appreciation of a school.

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Our school gives moderate recognition to our team, but what we do have is pretty impressive considering that this is only our second year of existence. When we first came around there was a giant header on our school's website "Robotics Comes to Judge!" chock full of pictures from the Philadelphia regional. As far as funding, I don't know the specifics of what exactly the school pays for (I'm pretty sure they pay for our pizza, which is sweeeeet) so I won't really comment on that, but we are lucky to have great sponsors.

We get on the school announcements every now and again. Our school doesn't have so great telecommunications and broadcast technology, so our school "news network" consists of a few guys reading the announcements off a piece of paper.

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Sometimes the best you can hope for is that other people in your school actually realize you have a robotics team, let alone recognizing you for your accomplishments.

My wife and I were walking into a school for an off-season event. We were following a small group of cheerleaders or dance team members, I don't know which, down the hall. One wondered why they couldn't practice in the gym that day - because the robotics team had it reserved was the answer. "Oh, we have a robotics team?"

Sigh. This is a team with a low number. They've been around for at least a dozen years. There's still a lot more culture-changing to do.

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

To answer your question, we have always had varsity letters for robotics, (there club letters still the same but different) and we have started airing meeting times more often on the school news but we are very lowly recognized. Most people don't even know why our shirts only have our numbers on it. It's pretty bad and we do have a little showcase but it's belittled by all the band, football, and cheer leading trophies next to it, and robotics being the last showcase it in the back. Also this year our team finally recognized as their team by finally paying the entry fee, which our team is very happy about. All in all we're sort of recognized not to much but ehh.

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

Bring your superintendent/principal to the competition. Pay for them to come. 1276 worked out of a vocational school, and the lead administrator was always willing to give us space because he thought it was a great way to get the kids who wouldn't normally take vocational school classes involved with the voc school. This was fantastic, but at that point the school didn't give us any financial support (although the 1000 square feet of our own space plus access to the shop work floor provided we cleaned up after ourselves was more than generous!)

We brought him to our regional in 2006, and the very next day we had a board of directors eager to put money in our coffers. (Perhaps it is worth noting that in a happy coincidence we also won that regional...)

Any school official who isn't tickled pink by hundreds high school students, and teachers, and parents, and mentors spending their weekend celebrating STEM isn't a school official worth having.

Re: How are your teams recognized by your schools?
 

We have a very positive relationship with our local school district. In a recent newspaper flyer advertising the benefits of our city's school system, one of their five main bullet points they listed was "Nationally Recognized Robotics Program". :D