Girls on FIRST teams

[Erin Rapacki]

Originally Posted by Monochron

We have one girl actively involved on building the robot because she wanted to. She does a good job, but nobody really sees it as "wow, that girl is good at robotics" but more as "That student did a good job with that arm."

It almost seems in your post (and I'm sure this was not your intention at all) that you are portraying girls as objects that you have to initiate into engineering. We certainly give them the chance to work on the robot but its just not their thing.
Its more like "We have 5 students on our team who don't work on the actual robot; 3 happen to be girls."

There's no real difference in opportunity, they just chose not to do that aspect of the team.

Yes, that's entirely my point! Girls have to be initiated into engineering, and what may seem to be "not their thing" may actually be a layer of extreme interest covered up by a lack of self confidence. Ultimately, once they've gained confidence in their ideas... it won't matter that they're a girl, they'll give technical input no matter what.

As for getting design ideas, they need to own some kind of design aspect... even if its a pre-season thing or a small part of the robot. It takes ownership of something to finally "get it"...

It'll be a big push to get the ball rolling, but once it rolls... it flies. Try it.