How is your team formed?

[Kristina]

Hey everyone,
I know its sad to think that this year is already coming to a close, but on the bright side, that means school is almost out also.

I was wondering how everyone's teams are formed.
Do you have a class in your school just for robotics or is it a club?
Is there tough competition to get onto the team or is everyone allowed?
How do you pick people if you have to limit the number?
Do people apply for different subgroups?

I was just curious because we just picked our successors for next year <sniff> since 25/30 people on the team this year are graduating. This year was the first year we were a class and there were 160 people who filled out applications for 30 spots. Of course, people were allowed to come help us afterschool, and thats when we did most of the building anyway.

After seeing how much it was this year, there were less applicants, I think around 75 but they were all really qualified. People ranked what subgroups they would like to be in the most (design/construction, animation, management, etc) so we got a diverse group. Me and our fearless leader, King Jeff, selected 15 based on their applications and then we interviewed the rest and had to make the heartbreaking cuts. I have a new found respect for the college admissions boards!

I thought our system of applications and interviews was really good and I think we selected an awesome team for next year. Anyone else have any ideas?

[Gui Cavalcanti]

Yeah, we pretty much run on whoever shows up for the meetings. We have an Administrative, Communications, Project Management, and Finance officer on the team (elected positions, chosen after Nationals of that year). We're lucky if we can get a group of 10 to 12 dedicated students, and even then it's tough to get everything together. We usually have one person skilled in one precise area, or a group of people, so things generally run in that area by what they say.

In our school, robotics is an afterschool club. Only after winning a regional does our school even start to acknowledge our existence (for more bragging rights...). Our school also has a robotics class this year, but it won't be a class next year and this year they wanted nothing to do with us. Instead, they built a blimp... using our tools and our room. Unfortunately, the class is taught by the same teacher sponsor of the club (even though he doesn't do anything for us anyway), so it's allowed.

I wish we had to take applications... it's easier to cut some people than waiting for more than 4 people to show up on a build season day.

[Scottie2Hottie]

Yeah, we pretty much run on whoever shows up for the meetings. We have an Administrative, Communications, Project Management, and Finance officer on the team (elected positions, chosen after Nationals of that year). We're lucky if we can get a group of 10 to 12 dedicated students, and even then it's tough to get everything together. We usually have one person skilled in one precise area, or a group of people, so things generally run in that area by what they say.

In our school, robotics is an afterschool club. Only after winning a regional does our school even start to acknowledge our existence (for more bragging rights...). Our school also has a robotics class this year, but it won't be a class next year and this year they wanted nothing to do with us. Instead, they built a blimp... using our tools and our room. Unfortunately, the class is taught by the same teacher sponsor of the club (even though he doesn't do anything for us anyway), so it's allowed.

I wish we had to take applications... it's easier to cut some people than waiting for more than 4 people to show up on a build season day.

Amen Gui i feel your pain, thats our exact same situation

[Kristina]

I guess I really take our numbers and luck for granted (though, as manager...its sometimes not fun getting all those people to work). How big are your guys schools? We have 2600 people in ours, I don't know if that makes a difference or not. We're a public school, but supposidly a very competitive one with tons of "active" students.

We also draw people from all different crowds because our teacher is just awesome. I, for example, am not scientifically inclined but I was recruited for my management skills. Then there's the ex-football players who love all the manual labor. Not your average robotics people I guess some people would say. Recruiting also helps because we have tons of connections. There are two members of student government (me being one)...this helps us get a little money and ideas for fundraisers. We have newspaper people so we always get recognition in there. One team member is in print shop so he silkscreened all of our shirts. Then our head guy's mom is a teacher so he missed three weeks of school to build our robot but didn't get in trouble (well his grades did drop).

However...while our teacher is a really funny English guy (he even set up a monarchy in our robotics team ) he mostly delegates power so I empathize with having a teacher that doesn't do anything. I basically felt like the advisor filling out all the paper work, even ordering our hotel, airline tickets, and rental cars. Fortunately everything went well or else I would get lynched by the boys. Yeah...that wouldn't be good!

[Gui Cavalcanti]

Yeah, our team comes from the Maggie L. Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies, which has a total student body of just about 600 people... I can see where the number discrepancy would come from.

[asher]

applications, interviews, references

We require them all

We strive to have a very dedicated team and will only accept the qualified ones who really show promise and we feel could gain something from the program. Since our high school is partnered with a university we ended up with 8 high schoolers this year and around 10 college students (we strive for 10 and 10). Our high school has around 2500 kids, so we aren't really a small school either. We've always found this to work best for our team and let each member involved get the most out of the organization.

Ashley

[Matt Attallah]

Originally posted by asher
applications, interviews, references

We require them all

We strive to have a very dedicated team and will only accept the qualified ones who really show promise and we feel could gain something from the program. Since our high school is partnered with a university we ended up with 8 high schoolers this year and around 10 college students (we strive for 10 and 10). Our high school has around 2500 kids, so we aren't really a small school either. We've always found this to work best for our team and let each member involved get the most out of the organization.

Ashley

Woh, our team just lets anyone join, and if they do enough work, they can get off school and come to competitions w/ us. We have total 13 students, and our school size isn't even 600 (550~500), although our school, next year, will become a open enrollment, so hopefully that will make us a lot bigger, but i will miss being in a small club. Our school had a club/class, but they are trying to keep is seperate. I don't see why. When we are in "down time" for FIRST, we learn about gears, programming, etc... and when the build time is in full swing, we should use that class time. Our class is held where we keep our robot stuff at. I am kinda mad at that, but i can see, too, why. There are about 20 students in the class, and about 15 of them don't want to be in there. They had to take it for a technological credit. I can see the ups & downs, but during the build seasion, they should get a grade in it, like us, even if they don't want to do it, if they do it half-@$$ed, then they get a 1/2 grade, but, now that i think if it, i can see that if we have a 1/2 robot that wouldn't be too good. Grrrr, how i hate my school about this!!

[Alfred Thompson]

We took anyone and everyone. We had about 30 people. That's how many kids went to Regionals with the team. Around 20 will go to nationals but we didn't pick them. We had no money to help people go anyone who could afford to come is coming.
As a rookie team, the adults more or less picked the kids in leadership positions early on. Later developemts (operator crew and pit crew) were selected by the students. We expect that students will pick all the leaders next year.
We are strictly an after school club. I don't think we have a department that could easily run a robotics couse. No machine shops, automotive shops, drafting shop or anything like that at our school.

[Chubtoad]

Originally posted by Doanie8
However...while our teacher is a really funny English guy (he even set up a monarchy in our robotics team ) he mostly delegates power

HHAHA Our founder/head teacher guy is English too!!! What is it with the English!! Does he like Guiness? Does he drink tea all day long?!?!

Our team is about 30 people I think, I don't even know, its been growing slowly. I'd guess our school has about 1200 kids. We have open admission. Some people work on the robot, some people don't, some people do the Chairman's award, some don't. We have been trying to get more people to join, but the kids at our school don't think it is exactly "cool" to be on the robotics team. In the past year, and this year its been a lot easier to get smart dedicated people to join, in the past month I think I've convinced about 5 hard working, intelligent people to join the team after nationals.

The main problem was the people who founded the team were considered the "outcasts" the smart, technically inclined, and then the people who joined and spread the word about the program were the techinically inclined, so everyone thinks you have to be techinically inclined and they are scared to join, but slowly and surely, I am making a differnce

This is my third year on the team and the team's 4th year and I've risen to be recognized as the "team leader" and it upsets me to see all of these huge teams from small to large schools, and I'm from a large school and it is so hard to get dedicated people

[Kristina]

OMG, that's so cool you have an English guy too! He doens't drink that much tea but he always calls us funny Americans...like how we pronounce the word butter and water. Anyway, we do have a large British influence in our class. I'm Queen Kristina, there is King Jeff, Prince Eric, and Prince Chris. Then we have our loyal subjects. He also wanted to name our team the Harts. We would be the Hart High School Hart's...gee I wonder how that name was shot down. Apparently the Hart is some kind of ferocious animal in England or something.

Oh yeah...Matt...as for grades, why don't you give grades according to how much people work? While we also learned the technical stuff first semester, since our second semester was only about building, we gave grades soley on participation. There's been all these kids who have gotten straight A's and they're lazy so it was a wakup call when we gave them a B-.
Here's a tougher situation though on grading, any insights would be greatly appreciated:
There's this kid in our robotics class who got into Stanford and MIT and we were all kinda surprised. Well he's in the robotics class and hardly ever shows up and does nothing. We gave him the simple task of printing out dinner tickets but they came in very late and we had to reschedule our dinner. If we give him lower than a C, he'll get disinvited from his colleges. Talk about pressure on the other team leaders on me...we're thinking of just giving him a C- so he can go to his college even though he deserves less (maybe there he'll get kicked out or shape-up). To kind of link this back to the thread topic, it was really really competitive to get into this class (had to cut 130 people) and it would be kinda nice to show that you have to earn your spot and do stuff to keep it. What do you think?

[Alfred Thompson]

A hart is actually a male deer.

[purplehaze357]

robotics is just a club at my school ....we have a robotics manufacturing class but it is the biggest joke and has nothing to do with FIRST....and to be honest it hasnt caught on at my school yet....the middle school ("the feeder schools") yes it has but not at the HS yet...its startin to pick up tho...and i cant wait for all the post/pre season compettions...even tho this one hasnt ended

Lynn Crawford the technology coordntor for the district stumbled upon the competition 3 years ago and thats the history....The first year the adults consisted of Ms. cavanaugh (a science teacher who has recently switched districts), Ms. Hale (science teacher), Mr Delaney (Math teacher) and my dad (manager of computer services for the upper darby school district), last year we kept those same teachers and picked up the woodshop teacher mr macintyre (who left this year), and Mr Tom Hargy (Rankin automation engineer), and this year....we picked up three engineers, 2 machinists a corporate sponsor and a machine shop, and some very enthusiastic parents...

As you can tell the program keeps growing and growing and the more schools that we visit the more kids we get involved...the middle school kids love this and cant wait....i think its amzing that we can inspire kids like this to get involved at school....

[Jim McGeehin]

We were originally the DuPont Explorer Post, designed to get young people interesting in engineering. We introduced FIRST into it, and it not only caught on, but it dominated the entire thing.

[Scorpion515]

Our team formation was pretty simple. Somewhere back in September our teacher (coach, whatever we are to call him) announced that there would be a meeting. People came (like 30).

Then in January we had meetings again (like 25).

Then we built the robot (and there was like 15 people).

Simple, huh? Our school is so tiny anyway (500 students) that we have very few interested people.

Our biggest problem is going to be next year. Out of the 15 people, we'll be losing like 7 or something (I don't remember) to graduation.

Oh well.

[PsychoPhil]

Originally posted by Scorpion515
Our team formation was pretty simple. Somewhere back in September our teacher (coach, whatever we are to call him) announced that there would be a meeting. People came (like 30).

Then in January we had meetings again (like 25).

Then we built the robot (and there was like 15 people).

Simple, huh? Our school is so tiny anyway (500 students) that we have very few interested people.

Our biggest problem is going to be next year. Out of the 15 people, we'll be losing like 7 or something (I don't remember) to graduation.

Oh well.

Try to take your robot for a demonstration to other high schools that are relatively near by and recruit people...

I'm from a school that's over an hour away form our machine shop and luckily i found someone to drive me up there every day after school. That's what a few dedicated people will prolly do form other schools if you inform them...
It's a nice experience to have more than one school involved.
FIRST it is really uncomfortable to have virtual meetings over a lerning network kind of thingy but it gets more fun every time ad there are many aspects that you don't have involved when there is only one school (well there are also less compications with only one school, lol)

so long, Philip