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

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by kjolana1124

Gee, wonder where you got that idea.

Not from Shaker... I believe team shirt days have been coordinated in the past.

[CENTURION]

We get some recognition in our school, we had school-wide announcements, and a place on the schools announcement board about our success (kind of) at the Championship. For the most part, our team remains generally unknown. Placing somewhere in the neighborhood of 18th in the world helped us a lot, I was getting asked about it all day long, but it's still hard to recruit people.

Due to the small physical size of our school, we can't get our own classroom or anything to have a buildsite, the most we get from the school is a little bit of funding, several mentors, and a display case (that is sorely in need of something more impressive than what is in it)

[Pirate_Nelly354]

They cared about us in 2007 when we won the NYC regional. We have two bulletin boards, one big (in a hallway no one walks by), and one small.

We put up flyers around the school, we're there at open houses and parent-teacher nights talking to students and adults but nope, they don't care. At this year's regional, not one student showed up.

[pSYeNCe]

Originally Posted by Pirate_Nelly354

They cared about us in 2007 when we won the NYC regional.
...
At this year's regional, not one student showed up.

Yeah, we don't have non-team students showing up. I guess most of them just don't want to spend a day watching robots (yes, I know it's much more than that, but they don't see it that way). Them being that fickle makes me angry though... But I guess that's how people are.

[Wildcat]

Originally Posted by pSYeNCe

Yeah, we don't have non-team students showing up.

its pretty much the same for my team. the only non-members we have show up are parents/relatives of team members, and the occasional girlfriend of a team member

[JaneYoung]

Just a question: how much has your robotics team shown the school/general population that you care?

Have you:
- shown up in your team shirts ready to cheer on the basketball team, the football team, the wrestling team, etc.?
- found creative ways to make a positive impact on your school's atmosphere? One example would be to celebrate your teachers' commitment to helping educate you and working to create a special day of recognition or joining in with one that is already in place.
- discussed ways to build bridges between the administration and the team or the other areas of the school that are non-technical, such as Fine Arts?

Jane

[Wildcat]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Just a question: how much has your robotics team shown the school/general population that you care?

Have you:
- shown up in your team shirts ready to cheer on the basketball team, the football team, the wrestling team, etc.?
- found creative ways to make a positive impact on your school's atmosphere? One example would be to celebrate your teachers' commitment to helping educate you and working to create a special day of recognition or joining in with one that is already in place.
- discussed ways to build bridges between the administration and the team or the other areas of the school that are non-technical, such as Fine Arts?

Jane

1- football: we have members of the team on the football team though, as for b-ball: they play during our build season so we cant.
2- closest thing we have ever done to that is paint our teams logo in 2 places in one building of our 4-building collage sized campus
3- never, with 6.2k students and about 500 faculty divided among 3 schools on 1 campus would just be too many different people to deal with, since each school has its own department of subjects

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Wildcat

3- never, with 6.2k students and about 500 faculty divided among 3 schools on 1 campus would just be too many different people to deal with, since each school has its own department of subjects

That may be something to explore in this thread or one that develops from this:
- the sizes of the schools and how they are structured
- teams that are made up of more than one school
- how large the faculty is
- how accessible the school board is
- what kind of overlap the team members have with other teams/organizations and if partnerships are possibilities

I'm thinking that a school that has a student population of 6000 would have some different constraints than a school with a much smaller population. Same thing with teams made up of students from one school and teams made up of students from multiple schools. It might be fun to explore the differences and similarities and discuss some ideas or thoughts.

Jane

My school?

You could fit the entire everybody in my school that cares (minus the team obviously) in a matchbox and still have room for the matches.

[Tuefel Hunden]

Our school's facility know that we exsist, but that's were it ends. We were having our awards banquet and we served the meal outside. We had the robots out demoing them and just so happen that there was a laccrose game ending and the students were passing our event. They were amazed!!! They were saying things like, "We have a robotics team?" and "Do they actually let you make this here?". Some even took pictures. So I'll have to agree with eveyone else in saying that people in the school don't know about us. I think that we're going to change that this year at Club Rush.

[Eagleeyedan]

Originally Posted by Bmcdonnell

Our team, 2062 is composed of three different schools, so I can only talk about the one I go to. Ever since we got a new administration, attention to the robotics team has gone way up. The principle knows me and the rest of the team members that go there by name and the majority of the teachers know us as well, even if we haven't had them. We use to have to write our own announcements about our regionals, but not anymore. We have had people come to our closest regional and help cheer us on, even a few *very few* kids. We are able to give presentations to the school board, and put videos about our team on the local broadcasting station and video announcements. Honestly, I have never been called a nerd or anything, just a congrats at whatever we did from people I don't even know. The administration places our trophies next to all the sport ones, and we have some of the biggest ones At the beginning of our team, it was very hard to get recognized, but now we are forced to be in pep rallies and what not. Again, I'm not sure about the other schools, but I can't imagine the at least one of the other ones to be much different.

Actually, 4 schools. Don't forget about homeschool!

[gyroscopeRaptor]

This is our first year, and we aren't recognized too much yet. But we do have 20 people who have built on the robot so far, and we did show it at the Winterfest dodgeball tournament (link to video). We will have t-shirts by the end of the week, and the school's video production and broadcast class will do a video for us before ship date. We showed it at the middle school, and we have a basketball game and a school board meeting lined up. We are working on our image.

[2bkrul]

Very slim, we were just able to compete in FRC the last few years. With the help of NASA and our new principle we were just able to make it. In terms of supporting the team, there is NONE what so ever. We try to get announcements made about meeting and other things, but it doesnt happen. Barely any teachers know who we are and its disappointing. Yes our team has its problems and we might not be the best in the school, but we get more out of what we do in FIRST then we would being in football or any other sport (even though we are a "varsity sport for the mind."

At the beginning our principle was supportive, willing to help us out with anything, but when everything started up, his support dropped. Our admin team knows who we are (because of some drama with the member) but they dont know what we do and how much it means to us. The teachers dont do anything, they hear us talk about it but they dont congratulate and ask how its going.

I am very fed up with the lack of support, not just here, but across the entire world (even though the subtle hint with Will.I.Am at the super bowl was nice) Yes, there are some teams that have LOADS of support, but there are the teams that are running out of a garage because of a lack of support and funding.

If anyone has any ideas about ways to gain support, please PM me

[fyrefrost]

The only time my robotics team ever really gets any attention is when we take the robot out and drive it around durring open enrollment night. Not very many members of the general population know about us. Our football team gets a lot of attention, as do several other sports. I don't think a nonteam member that's not a parent has ever shown up to our regional.

[KC1AJT]

Our team is from a tech school so it recieves a ton of support within the school. Our school is our biggest sponsor, even donating the use of most shops in the school (as well as their students). The Boston Regional has been used as a school-wide field trip, also. This year, a few shops have added robotics to their teachings and are helping more and more with the robot (sometimes too much). The school is seeing a decrease in skill-oriented trades and is pushing robotics more and more as a way to introduce every student to engineering.