FRC Class Curriculum Help

[jpetito]

I'd like to affirm Nicholsjj: Getting buy-in from the people who set the curriculum is the most difficult part. You have to meet whatever state standards are in existence for math and science and squeeze in the robotics program to describe as many points of contact as possible. A number of states have adapted something called "A through G," a set of standards that make something like a for-credit FRC-style building program difficult to fit into. If the class is offered as an elective, the honors and college-prep students will be reluctant to take the class: An "A" will pull down their gpa (as unlikely as it sounds). Keep asking the questions!

[safiq10]

Now we have convinced our school board to let us juniors have our current engineering class as a robotics class, which is awesome expect for the fact that the school board is forcing the junior class to work on 2 other robotics competitions (FTC and BEST). So we decided that we will attempt to work on FRC by using FTC and BEST as our in class training grounds. So my question is have any of you been in a similar situation and how did you go about it?

[Chirag]

Looking at the MA guidelines, it looks like we definitely could satisfy most of those requirements for an engineering class. But that definitely helps with giving the curriculum a more defined shape. Thanks nicholsjj!

As for getting school board members, the principal, and superintendent on board, I feel like that shouldn't be too hard as long as we follow those guidelines and really show how beneficial the class is. We recently gave the school committee a presentation on our team and our last two seasons and they were extremely impressed by us and FIRST as a whole. They said they were eager to help in any way possible so that seems like a good sign. Plus our school has recently been trying to emphasize engineering in the school with PLTW classes so I think this may just be the perfect time to ask.