How much does your school's general population care about your team?

[E Dawg]

We are pretty lucky with our school. The administration provides us with the entire tech shop full of mills, lathes and other shop tools we can use. We are also provided class credit for joining the team.

As for other students, there is a lot of work to be done. Most people don't know we have a team and the school news did a commercial, they didn't ask us for input and filmed tools that we didn't even use for our robot. It was not pretty.

But having the entire shop to ourselves is nice, especially because they let us use school equipment after hours.

[nickb705]

My teachers tell me good luck as the hand me any make up work that I need, and that about it

[jwallace15]

Although all of our robot building and other team-related activities take place in our school, we get almost no (good) attention.

A few days ago, someone next to me in one of my classes was reading about us winning our District Chairman's Award. Someone next to him said "Why are you reading about those nerds?" He proceeded to say "No clue" and closed out his tab.

I show my friend a lot of stuff that has to do with robotics, including swerve drive (thanks Team 16, Bomb Squad for your unveil videos ), our shooter, and other things. He always replies to me "I could build something better. That looks stupid."

We demoed our 2012 robot in the cafeteria at lunch, and someone came up to us and said "Your robot is really loud." and walked away. In the same lunch period, someone else came up and said "My brother could build a better robot." and walked away.

It seems that the people from my school (I'm not sure about our other 2 schools) have no respect for engineering, and the six weeks of hard work we put into our robots.

[F22Rapture]

Originally Posted by jwallace15

I show my friend a lot of stuff that has to do with robotics, including swerve drive (thanks Team 16, Bomb Squad for your unveil videos ), our shooter, and other things. He always replies to me "I could build something better. That looks stupid."

Doesn't sound like much of a friend...

But that's a shame on the part of your school. Those attitudes are the sort that FIRST was designed to change in the first place, and I do hope that your team can turn it around a bit.

[faust1706]

By the end of build season, we are left with maybe 10 students. 2 programmers (though thats how many we've had for 3 years), 1 design, an electrical student, and some build. We do have a sign by the highway for our winning of stl Regional in 2009 and placing 31st at internationals two years ago. We show off our robot every spring assembly. It will be nice because this year, we can actually do something with our robot instead of hanging inner tubes. We start off with way too many kids who dont do much, especially the business side, then as the season grinds on, they stop coming, until competition of course.

[Clayton Yocom]

We have a very supportive administation, and parents often know more about the team than students due to our media coverage. We have a wall in the cafeteria that has all of our achievements (up to 2009, the wall isn't big enough for our more recent endevours). Most students know about the robotics team, but very few understand what we do. Last year helped a lot because of how easy it is to connect to the robot playing 3v3 basketball.

[jwallace15]

Originally Posted by F22Rapture

But that's a shame on the part of your school. Those attitudes are the sort that FIRST was designed to change in the first place, and I do hope that your team can turn it around a bit.

We reach out to our community as much as we possibly can to our students. We have a display case with info on our team. We participate in our pep assemblies. Unfortunately, sometimes people just have no interest in engineering. I'm a sophomore, and speak for my class. Some interest probably comes with maturity. I am pretty sure that older, more mature students appreciate the doings of FIRST more than younger people who still believe in cliques (which bug me), or think they are better than everyone else.

I don't think that "popular" people realise this; the phones that they are addicted to? Who designed them? The "nerds". The stereotypical SUV they have? Who designed that? The "nerds".

Everybody loves the football and basketball players, and the cheerleaders and poms team. Why don't people love the robotics team members? What with all the mechanisms and robots we design? You don't know how many people I've told about CADD that don't have a clue what it is. I show them, and give a quick demo on how to make a simple thing (like a box, maybe with a couple holes). They think it is the most complicated thing ever. "You know how to use that? You have way to much time on your hands." I'm sorry, and what do you do in your spare time? "Chill". Chill? What is "chilling"? "Sitting around." Sitting on the couch watching a stupid reality TV show and not doing anything that benifits your brain is better than engaging your brain, trying to solve a problem and make saucers fly and robots climb?

I apologise for my rant, Chief Delphi Community. I'm hoping someone can answer my questions. I just don't understand.

[mman1506]

Our school is a tech school so we get a decent amount of money as are school is are only sponsor and we have robotics classes.

Though are old principal liked the program so much that she cancelled the buses while we were at the competition. We also have no mentors and one teacher who stays until 6 if were lucky.

[malanis]

Two years ago our school kicked us out, Plain and simple. We have two high schools in our district, and students from both were on the team. We had so little support from the administration, and the schools population, that they turned the engineering room into a sports medicine room. As of now we work out of a space in a dying mall twenty minutes away from the schools.

[F22Rapture]

Originally Posted by malanis

Two years ago our school kicked us out, Plain and simple. We have two high schools in our district, and students from both were on the team. We had so little support from the administration, and the schools population, that they turned the engineering room into a sports medicine room. As of now we work out of a space in a dying mall twenty minutes away from the schools.

Wow. That sucks man. I hope things work out a bit better for you guys in future years.

[karomata]

1511's first year it was mainly just 8 students on the team and a bunch of mentors. However, our rookie year we won Toronto Regional, and we ended up winning CMPs Rookie All-Star. After that our relations with the school improved greatly (even though they were already really strong) and our student population on our team exploded. Nowadays we are 45 students and have a lot of support from the administration of our school, and many students not on our team also greatly support us. It's very unfortunate that not all teams can have the support from their school that we have.

[THE DYNAMO]

At my school, many people do not know about the robotics program, but those that do (mostly the classmates of team members) don't disrespect the program, in fact, they are often amazed by the differences between the stereotype image in their head and the reality. I find most people believe that we build a complicated robot to do some useful task or complete and obstacle course, and then we are judged and ranked in the style of a science fair. when i show them match videos and the sheer scale of participation, they seem much more interested. And then there are the kids that are so disappointed when I have to tell them that FIRST is not, in fact, BattleBots. I wish we had that kind of money....

[THE DYNAMO]

also, the trophies and banner from winning the 2011 Las Vegas Regional attracted tons of people at club day. maybe the best thing about winning your first regional!

[ElRampa]

Our school administration is VERY supportive of us. They talk about our wins, our awards, and other things like that. The pricipal has always wanted to start a sort of engineering and tech magnet school at our high school, so he's EXTREMELY happy with news of advancement and awards we win, he even convinced our school district even pays all of our competition entrance fees to help us out

But that's where the good news ends. The student population, on the other hand, is hardly supportive. If at all, really.
We started the year with 26 members, and even as wins and trophies have piled up, members continue to leave. Now, we're down to 8 kids managing two FTC teams and robots, and it can get hectic. We try to talk about all that we do and how fun it is, but many students aren't willing to put in all the work that we require, even saying that two meetings a week is too much! :/
It's easy to generate interest when your school is an engineering or technology magnet school, but for just a regular high school with average kids, it's hard to get their attention. We make promotional posters, advertise that we're still allowing people to join the team, and even mention that we get to miss days of school. But yet nobody new has joined since November :///

It's sad to know that so many great minds are missing out on such a fun activity, and a productive one at that, simply because they're "too busy" to put in all the time.

Okay. I'm done.

TL;DR: Administration at school loves us, but the student body, not so much.

[RoeeVulcan]

The high staff of the school is very supportive of the group, espeicialy now with the new trophy we brought them. The school principal and vice principal came to the competition, and acctualy hugged me at the finals. it was amazing. They agreed to pay for us to go to paintball to celebrate.
We have a pretty small space in the back of a room that only 5 people have a key to, inside the shelter, but it is cool. They gave us some more space, tripel what we had last year so we are not complaining.
As far as the students body of the school than we have some improvments to make. Only a quater of the school knows we exist, and half of them know what we do. Not as bad as the vollyball team but still not good. They just hung our new, big $@#$@#$@# sign in the entry to the school, and we just started making some new videos so this should get better.
The teachers are split between supportive and unsuportive. the com[uter science is managing a mindstorm project, so we keep havin small fights on which of us is beter (obviously us, we built a giant robot he is a grown man playing with legos). and the teachers are between- "go robotics", "so proud" to- "That medal is not an acscuse to not do your hmework roee!".

So room to improvment but we are not complaining.