Ontario Teams in Jeopardy for 2012/2013?

[dtengineering]

Originally Posted by akoscielski3

What was the reason your team folded in BC?

Is there anyway we could help to start more teams out West??
PM me if you'd like a bit of help starting teams

Different teams in BC have folded for different reasons, but most seem to be linked to the difficulty in establishing community based mentorship relationships, thus leaving the bulk of the responsibility for organizing the team on one teacher, or a small team of teachers, at the school.

When the lead teacher moves on to a new job, or has to take time away from the team for other issues, someone needs to be able to step into the gap... or the team folds.

In my case, when I took a new job in post-secondary education there was no one at David Thompson Secondary willing to step in to be the lead teacher for the team... so although we had healthy sponsorship arrangements (thank you General Motors Canada, in particular) in place, and plenty of students wanting to be involved, there was no one willing to say "I'm in charge!" and take the team forward.

I should also add that there is no provincial government funding or support for competitive robotics in BC... yet. Looking at provinces and states that have seen significant FRC growth over the past few years, the direct funding and indirect support of government can play a major role in establishing the groundwork for building FRC teams.

Perhaps somewhat related more to this thread I should add that I wasn't surprised to see that teachers were reluctant to volunteer for a task of FRC's magnitude. During my 13 years of teaching high school the BC government went through several rounds of "belt tightening" in the education system. Ultimately this downloads the cost of providing a decent curricular education on to teachers who now have more students in each class and fewer resources to teach them with. It is very clear to teachers (and, hopefully, students) that curricular activities must come before the extra-curricular activities. As the curricular demands on teachers were increased the time and energy available for extra-curricular activities decreased. In addition to this very practical constraint, I should add that many of the government's actions had a very negative impact on teacher morale. This affected extra-curricular activities from drama to athletics and, yes... robotics. It would be fair to say that even without an intentional "ban" on extracurricular activities government decisions had slowly and quietly been cutting away at teachers' ability and enthusiasm to support activities outside the classroom.

That is perhaps one of the reasons we are having good success with VRC here in BC. VEX can be integrated into the school curriculum much more easily than FRC due to the extended build/competition season. This year members of both the VRC World Championship Alliance, and the VRC World Finalist Alliance were from BC. (Yes, Gladstone Secondary had a 1-2 finish.)With luck, as our VRC team numbers continue to grow, we will build up a culture of competitive robotics in BC, and begin to form the corporate and governmental ties that have created the conditions for FRC to succeed in other provinces and states.

Jason