What does your school think of robotics?

[Joohoo]

In our school there are those who have no idea about us, a large portion though does know and is curiours about what we do. the same thing can be said about any club. There will always be those who think all we do is a bunch of "Black Magic" and weird club that lives in the technology wing.

[katiyeh07]

When confronting out principal about the lack of support he told me

"I can't be everywhere at once..."

and so I said

"Well...you could've stopped down during our six week build season once or twice. A few teachers stopped down during vacation, I saw your car at the school, but I didn't see you come down to the shop."

and so he says

"Well, you don't see me attend basketball practice do you?"

at which point I almost lunged across the table to knock his teeth out.


Then I argued the point of how can you be more supportive of the basketball team. I asked him how many kids do you think will go on to the pro's from our athletic teams (note that all of our fields got shut down due to the fact that we have illegal pestisides in the soil) and he says none.


It's frustrating that our school isn't supportive of one of the most successful programs it has going that gives their students jobs at corporate companies.


But we did make a few small steps this year...we got some of our banners hung up along side the athletic banners in our gym and we have one of the better display cases in the school. But it's still not the support we're looking for.

Maybe next year it'll be better...

[vivek16]

^ yep i definetly know how you feel.
like i said before, the only thing i hate is the lack of participation by the students. we have it pretty good other wise. oh and a little more recognition would be nice too.

[EmilioM]

Originally Posted by vivek16

oh and a little more recognition would be nice too.

Well... As far as recognition goes, take that into your own hands. Email/contact your local newspaper/radio/tv plugs and solicit your robot/program. Most media outlets enjoy having people come to them with stories and will most likely jump at the opportunity to do a piece on you if you sell yourselves well enough. We did so just after arriving home from SD, our second of two competitions, and we now have two local newspapers in line to write articles on us.

Once your school/community sees this recognition, you may just have a little bit more support

[mastermind12]

Most of my friends think I am a geek for being in robotics. Those same people think I am crazy for spending most of my time at school. A couple of my friends think its cool and want to give it a try which are the friends I met this year. Our principal as far as I know has never come down to see what we do. Its like they don't even know we exist.

[ttldomination]

My school doesn't think that robotics is the coolest thing in the world. But usually we get props from the administrators.

[Nin_estarSaerah]

we have finnally gotten over the "we have a robotics team?" response, but we seem to be in much the same categorey as the math team and the science club, the nerds. even some of our own team members consider it negatively as a nerdy activity. one of the freshmen admitted he doesnt tell anyone he is in robotics because it is for geeks. that makes me sad. FIRST is my life.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Nin_estarSaerah

one of the freshmen admitted he doesnt tell anyone he is in robotics because it is for geeks.

Does your teammate read ChiefDelphi?
If he doesn't, pick out some of your favorite posts or threads and share them with him. Give him some names of FIRSTers that post here, like Andy Baker, and have him search some of their posts and see the world of robotics and FIRST through their eyes. CD is a great place for geeks to get their footing and figure out just how cool they really are.

Being smart and wanting to make a difference in this world is something to be very proud of. It's also something to have fun with.

[Laura_587]

Our school has never been very supportive, and we normally get the "robotics" response (especially some of my friends). But we got a new principle this year, and he's more supportive. He even came to VCU. And my soccer team is stilll reeling over the fact that I skipped prom to go to Atlanta, but they're respose is "okay, have fun" (which I did). And anyways, I've always been weird in a nerdy sort of way.

[Shmee]

Our school is sort-of supportive. Like the principal and admin and people like us, but the team itself is considered rather nerdy and we literally lose people because of our captains.

Sadly, we haven't done much to actually get anyone to like the Robotics Team, even though this was our rookie year...we only had an assembly before the high school (800-ish people) and then everyone hated us because we took so long. We get a little money, but we have to fix our colours, from black and neon green to white and green (official colours) if we want to keep on getting money for next year.

[SEA]

Our school is very supportive of robotics. Each year, we do a school wide presentation to show off the robot, and everyone loves that. When we present, our message isn't "I know this is nerdy and weird, but see how cool it can be..." but is "This is super awesome, I love it!" and the enthusiasm spreads. Since we share a classroom with the video productions class, we get a lot of coverage from them on the school's video bulletin.

Also, we brought two school buses of people from our school and our feeder junior high to the Los Angeles Competition this year, and they all had a blast and it gave them a sense of how big the competition and FIRST actually is.

Our principle wasn't really supportive until we began doing well, but now he is really into it and came to watch us put the finishing touches on the robot the morning before shipping.

[notaPINKtruck]

They don't.

[Ctrl Alt Delete]

Our school doesn't do much. I think besides our National Championship run and the three banners hanging in our "pendulum area" (which has no actual pendulum, just the space for one), they don't really acknowledge us. A little bit of money would be nice, but the school basically just give us a room and that's it.