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

[Squjayid]

Not at all. In fact, the only time we get noticed is if we do well at competitions!

[Trevor1523]

We too aren't well recognized... When I went to join my current team I decided to go to the guidance office to seek info and my guidance counsellor looked at me with a straight face and said "We have a robotics team?"

That pretty much sums it up.

[Brian Michell]

I can't speak that well about our schools population, but the administration at both our school and district are extremely supportive of the team. We're just one of the many lesser known clubs that are in our school but that is largely because we're only a second year team.

[TCMJ1816]

1816 is very well supported in our community.

Our principal makes regular appearances at our competitions and state championship. They do what they can to let us get visibility with the student body as well; We run robots at the homecoming assembly and at various other events throughout the year.

In our community we are very well known. We do tons of outreach in our schools with the other FIRST programs so it isn't super common to find a family that isn't at least a little familiar with the fact that we exist, some kids have been coming to our events for years and years awaiting being able to join the team.

Outreach is the best way to get interested in what you are doing. If you put yourself out there people will notice.

[erin623]

In our school, no one knows we exists or thinks we're a bunch of socially awkward nerds, so there is a stigma around joining. The school support is very iffy, but next year we plan to do heavy advertising and (hopefully) get some people who can help spread the word about the team.

[Liu346]

We are a huge football school so this year was very good for telling the rest of the school that we actually exist. I shaved my team number into my head this year and not a single person outside of robotics knew we even were a thing at their school.

[natejo99]

Our school rarely acknowledges us, and when we do it's never good. When we brought home our championship blue banner in 2014, our school gave us no recognition until the next fall, and even then we had to nearlt beg for that. When we are acknowledged by the student body it's never good. This is mainly due to one former team member who quit due to some issues with specific other team members. Unfortunately people tend to listen to and trust what he says, and he has a tendency to bad mouth our team. This has been a huge hit to us, as it has framed our team as very undesirable to be part of at our school, and that has made recruitment very difficult.

Edit - our superintendent is very supportive and even traveled from Michigan to STL to watch us compete. However the administration at our high school, many of the teachers, and most of the students show little/no recognition or respect for our team.

[Hgree56]

At our school, it seems the only people who care about our team is the members of the team, our tech teachers, and the principal. That's it and it's really sad to think about.

[Littlepchan]

Our school population almost entirely feeds off the robotics team. Although, there is a reason for this.

In our school we have no regulated sports, music program, or anything that is extra curricular that can't be a club. Also, even if we wanted to support those types of things the school is non-UIL so to bad so sad.

So, that's were Robotics kicks in. In school we are the football team, although we don't come with the attitude . Last year, we were cheered out of the door on our way to championships. This year, I can't get people to stop asking about how we are or what we're doing. We also have complete access to our machine shop and have our own private field set-up (on the second floor where in the area no one can use).

We're pretty lucky, and we try to spread what we have to other local teams that need the support.

[Type]

I don't think I have seen the principal at any of our events. At our closest event, some of our former teachers brought their middle school students to come watch but nobody from the high school came or really paid attention. When we qualified for State nobody really cared. When we qualified for world's, people cared a little more this year than last year. This year, the teachers at our virtual Academy and STEM buildings had the live stream going but when we got back, I just heard "I saw you guys online", nobody really congratulated us. Whenever sports teams qualify for state, the school arranges a police escorts to the highway. I know we aren't a sports team but we didn't even get that much recognition for how well we did. A lot of people don't really know who we are. I think until seeing the live streams, a lot didn't know we had a robotics team. The daily announcements don't point it out that greatly.
We have some school support, but barely any. We don't even get a place to meet on campus, which isn't too bad because where we meet is probably nicer than anything the school would ever give us. The nice thing is one or two of my teachers seem to like the robotics team, so after we got back from world's, they gave us more time than normal to make up any work we missed.

[maxnz]

We have been extremely lucky this year, with multiple teachers and students coming to the 10,000 Lakes regional and stopping by our pit to say hi (the principal was unfortunately out of town, otherwise I'm sure she would have come). That was partly due to an all staff email sent out on Friday night inviting teachers to come watch. We are currently pushing for a dedicated build space, due to a school remodel happening in 2017, and so far it seems promising. I can't speak for other years, but from what I've heard, this is our best year in many more ways than just statistically.

[EricH]

We get support... but we also get some stuff we'd rather not have. Example: District allows us to have sole use of a box truck. But... they insist on storing spare tables in the area we use as our meeting area, and we could use more space.


Overall, the support is pretty good, and after we had a reveal event (shortly after bag day, with our practice robot) that happened to be well-attended by teachers and association folks, as well as sponsors, that might even get better.

[Moskowapplepi]

After asking my friends and acquaintances at school I have concluded they care when we do well but are not very interested otherwise. The principal though always loves to hear how we did and likes to go to our events. We are a 4h program that is not affiliated with any school but includes students from 5 schools in 5 towns

[Russell2144]

Not much at all.

Our parents send all school emails while we're at comps telling students and teachers to keep an eye on TBA for us, and the most we ever hear is post comp, a couple teachers walk up to us and ask how we did.

[logank013]

In general, our school's staff has a lot of support for us. I see many 234 signs in random classrooms around the school. I also see a lot of 234 window stickers on teachers' classroom's windows. Surprisingly, I see a lot of Lunacy game pieces around our school and I'm not exactly sure why. We are located in Indianapolis and our principal took the Friday of worlds off in 2015 when we went. He drove to St. Louis to support our team. He also came to our Kokomo competition this year and was seen around our school when we hosted an IN event during our spring break this year. Now our team isn't by any means what students talk about. In general, students at our school don't really talk about any of our sports or academic teams. I know a big chunk of the school knows who we are. Many of our students wear Cyber Blue shirts and talk about the team with other students. Students recognize that. We were also honored last year at our Spring pep rally last year as well. In general people would say they know who we are.