Getting our assistant principle involved

[Fields]

Hey gang,

We are a second year team now, but after our team lead (and school teacher) went to another school and the assistant principle retired, I've been left as the only mentor with any experience.

Thankfully, we've been able to recruit another mentor, and there are a couple of teachers who are interested in the program (but not yet committed).

Best of all, the new assistant principle IS on board with the team, and even with no experience with FRC, she wants to help in any way possible. (run-on sentence?)

Our official team kickoff is the first part of November. What are some ideas on how she can get buy in from teachers and promote student recruitment?

• We have 5-6 students from last year that can help

• At this point, she's my only real contact at the school

• Looking for general ideas like setting up a booth at lunch that the students can use

• Also looking for ideas specific to her position like going through the correct procedures for setting up an after school club and how to get parent permissions on record.

• Really want ideas on how to get more teacher commitments (I believe her role would be a big help in this)

I don't work at the school so while I can get things going in the engineering process during the season, I don't know what goes into making everything work at the school.

I'm working on kickoff ideas for our first day, but we would really like to start out with 15-20 interested students (fingers crossed (pain to type like this)) and a few teachers.

Excited for Water Game 2016!

[notmattlythgoe]

Originally Posted by Fields

Hey gang,

We are a second year team now, but after our team lead (and school teacher) went to another school and the assistant principle retired, I've been left as the only mentor with any experience.

Thankfully, we've been able to recruit another mentor, and there are a couple of teachers who are interested in the program (but not yet committed).

Best of all, the new assistant principle IS on board with the team, and even with no experience with FRC, she wants to help in any way possible. (run-on sentence?)

Our official team kickoff is the first part of November. What are some ideas on how she can get buy in from teachers and promote student recruitment?

• We have 5-6 students from last year that can help

• At this point, she's my only real contact at the school

• Looking for general ideas like setting up a booth at lunch that the students can use

• Also looking for ideas specific to her position like going through the correct procedures for setting up an after school club and how to get parent permissions on record.

• Really want ideas on how to get more teacher commitments (I believe her role would be a big help in this)

I don't work at the school so while I can get things going in the engineering process during the season, I don't know what goes into making everything work at the school.

I'm working on kickoff ideas for our first day, but we would really like to start out with 15-20 interested students (fingers crossed (pain to type like this)) and a few teachers.

Excited for Water Game 2016!

My first question is, why is your team kickoff so late?

[Fields]

Until 2 weeks ago I was the only mentor and I'm studying for an 8 hour exam at the end of this month for my professional licence.

Big part of why I'm trying to enlist help in the first place.

[GeeTwo]

If your 2015 robot is still functional (or can be made so), do some demos with it somewhere that the school can see and interact with the returning team members. You may be able to coordinate it with a football game or pep rally, or take over a courtyard during lunch hour (having an assistant principal on board will definitely help with getting a venue). This will help recruit students, and possibly even teachers. For future years, you may want to create a project made just for public events (air cannon, tele-presence device, autonomous robot to round up stray balls) rather than depend on the competition robot(s).

With your 2015 robot, you could even do some things no other teams could do as quickly, such as invert a stack of three totes (go from gray-gold-green to green-gold-gray).

[Jon Stratis]

Definitely do demos. Find out if there are any school assemblies where the team can get up in front of everyone all at once.

To help get teachers committed, try talking to the school (the assistant principal should be able to help here!) about providing a coaching stipend for one or two teachers. Typically, coaches for football, basketball, soccer, etc all get some sort of stipend... And as FRC has been part of the MSHSL for the past 4 years many districts have opened that up to include robotics coaches as well. By getting one or two paid positions with the team, you create a situation where the teachers are officially recognized by the school and expected to put time into the program - so it's much more than you just begging them to come to meetings. Perhaps the best part of having those paid positions (from a selfish point of view), is that those positions are the ones actually responsible for everything - paper work with the school, permission slips, etc. Everyone else is a mentor there to help, and their focus can be entirely internal to the team, ignoring those external interfaces with the school.