Lack of Teacher Support

[FotoPlasma]

For the past two years (2002 and 2003, and soon to be 2004), 258 has been operating without a teacher involved. From the team's conception until after the 2001 season, Eric Stokely was the head coach, mentor, leader, and mastermind of the team. He was a physics teacher, along with instructing a "robotics" class (which I, sadly, was never involved in).

Ever since Eric Stokely moved to the Seattle / Tacoma area, and joined team 360, we've been without a direct connection to the faculty and administration of the high school. Between the 2001 and 2002 seasons, we were lucky to have Dr. Harry Garland sign on to be an overseer, of sorts. As an electrical engineer (among other things) and a parent of at least one alumni of team 192, Dr. Garland has proved to be an invaluable guide for the team.

Now, because we're without a direct connection to the faculty and administration of the school, we have a very restricted conduit with which we can access the students of the school. Thankfully, we have a core group of students who are interested in being part of the team, but without a teacher, we have no one willing to give students authoritative information about the program. There's practically no teacher willing to even mention to students about events like the WRRF's annual California Robot Games, workshops, meetings, and even the Kickoff (which is coming up soon). We're still trying to get a connection organized, but thankfully, we've become accustomed to this level of interest, on the school's part (they seem to pay as little attention to us as they can reasonably get away with).

To sum up our problems in a cautionary kind of way, I would highly recommend that you try to get a friendship going with some current teachers. Ask them to be willing to tell their classes about events the team might be involved in, such as meetings, the kickoff, and competitions, and maybe even to plug the team. Extra credit is always welcome, too. Perhaps schedule some demos of old robots (this might not be pertinent because of the fact that you're on a 1st year team, though). Be careful not to scare any teachers off, though. Don't even give them the hint that they'll be obligated to spend 100% of the time that they don't spend teaching classes worrying about students sawing hands off and setting fire to the building, for six weeks.