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Originally Posted by phoebe.patwell
I'm the administrator of the team in question and I can shed a little more light as well. ...
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Thank you for the additional insight. My only suggestion would be that the additional teacher need not be a tech studies teacher. Having a business education teacher as one of our team leaders was a very valuable asset. Her presence brought many new members to the team. (In an aside, dealing with the affirmative action aspects of this thread, having an adult female as one of the team leaders was a definite asset in getting more girls to join the team. Many became more interested in engineering, tools and technology as a result. There are ways to take positive action to address inequalities that do not involve disadvantaging another group.)
As a tech studies teacher (and now a teacher of future tech studies teachers) myself, I appreciate the value of the skills we bring to this competition, and was fortunate to work with some other outstanding tech teachers on our team over the years. But while we were busy down in the shop, there was another team busy preparing our promotional material, community involvement, web presence, chairman's presentation, fundraising campaigns, and overall team image. By the time you add in FIRST paperwork, field trip forms, travel and hotel arrangements, passports, travel medical insurance (okay... probably not a big deal for you, but it was for us) there was a lot of "clean hands" work to be done. Sometimes "build team" members saw this work as less important, or less demanding than building the robot, but they never seemed to have a problem handing out team buttons, posing with our mascot, coming down to accept a website award, or having a few skilled communicators ready to coordinate judging interviews and promote our team come alliance selection time! Some of our invitations into the elimination rounds, and several of our team's FRC awards were directly attributable to the work of this team. Our recognition as "Vancouver's Youth Group of the Year" was 100% due to their hard work and initiative.
It may also be possible to find a teacher with an interested math/physics/computer background to assist with programming, or perhaps CAD modelling of robot designs. If your team has, indeed, identified that you would like to reach a broader cross-section of the school population, perhaps there is a teacher who would be a good role model for or has good connections with the students you would like to recruit...?
So my advice, given your situation, would be to remember that it isn't all about the robot and there are many meaningful ways for adults and students alike to be involved with the team. Not all of them involve using power tools.
Jason