Operation Inspiration 2004: Who wants to read all of the WFA essays?

[SDPRIDE812]

Hi everyone, here is the entry for Robert Mainieri winner of the SoCal Regional Woodie Flowers Award, [WE LOVE YOU MR. MAINIERI!!!!]:

Captain Commando

“It’s sad…Mr. Mainieri doesn’t have a life. We make fun of him a lot for that. But, we all have deep respect for him,” said Giang Pham, a Team 812 student. Mr. Mainieri has gained this deep-found respect from his students by promoting engineering, teaching with innovative techniques, and instilling the importance of teamwork at the Preuss School.

In his third year at Preuss, Mr. Mainieri has brought FIRST, engineering, and math to its peak. Now, 13% of the high school student body participates in FIRST and 50 students take a class in either Introduction to Engineering or Principles of Engineering. The mania has even spread into the middle school as Mr. Mainieri’s efforts have started a FLL team, mentored by Team 812, and a LEGO Robotics class for sixth graders.

Besides bringing the culture of FIRST to its height at Preuss, Mr. Mainieri is an effective teacher with his own unique teaching style. His technique gives students the basic concepts and then pushes them to discover ideas beyond the classroom environment. He takes engineering ideas, such as the physics theories surrounding the EduRobot and breaks them down so that the students can understand them. For the robotics program, rather than teaching all the concepts himself, Mr. Mainieri works hard to give the participants access to experts in the engineering field. Because of this, students are able to work with real-life engineers and gain knowledge through another person’s perspective. Through Mr. Mainieri’s persistent effort, Team 812 now has twelve engineers. He has taught the students that learning doesn’t just happen during school hours but at all times and in many different ways.

Another skill that students have leaned from Mr. Mainieri is the importance of teamwork. From the conception of Team 812, he created subgroups covering each area necessary for a successful FIRST program. He established two main groups, business and engineering, with subgroups for each. Under Mr. Mainieri’s guidance, all these subgroups are able to communicate with one another constantly throughout the process, working with each other to ensure the robot and everything else is done successfully. Students see from this process how crucial teamwork is in order to accomplish any task.

Ultimately, a team is made of individuals and each individual of Team 812 can attest to the impact that Mr. Mainieri has had on their lives. Six hundred words is not sufficient to account for the stories of all those involved with the program. But here are a few: Julian Hernandez struggled for three years at Preuss before joining robotics. Afterwards, not only did he become engaged in school but his grades improved, his self-esteem increased, and he is now a leader on the robotics team. The 27 girls on the team, who are excited about engineering, could also tell many stories. Brigitte Rubidoux puts it best when she says, “Robotics is fun!” Mr. Mainieri inspires girls at Preuss to pursue engineering despite the stereotypes. He also helps the students use their imaginations. Vu Hong remembers a time when the team lacked the tools needed to build the robot so he encouraged them to be creative and substitute other mechanisms. He has also shown them how to use the resources of the community and other schools when Preuss cannot provide for the needs of the team. A Preuss teacher sums it up when she says, “Mr. Mainieri has created a spirit of teamwork, cooperation, and enthusiasm for the school that did not exist here. He basically began a tradition of first-class involvement that will serve as a model for generations of Preuss students to follow.”

[Rich Kressly]

That's 16 of the 26 winners ... only ten left ...

[Rich Kressly]

In an effort to continue to inspire others I'm bringing back this thread. We'd also like to see the other ten nominations posted here. When you post them, they will be linked from this page:

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/wf...tail&year=2004

[Steve W]

Bringing back an older post. I think it would be great to see all of the Woodie Flowers Award Winners essays. If you know of a team that has not submitted or if your team has not submitted, PLEASE try and get a copy or link so that others can see the reasons for the nominations. It is good to nominate but what better way to honor the person than to let others know why you thought they were Woodie Flowers Award material.

[Rich Kressly]

Hey Steve .... Thanks. In an effort to keep it positive, I'll refrain from naming the 10 winners who are not yet posted here. However, we know who you are and how to find you ... In all sincerity, every positive mentor story posted here gives many mentors a lift when they may be running low on fuel and who knows how many others out there it may inspire to become FIRST mentors.

[Steve W]

Rich, could you post the teams that have not posted? It would save me the effort of going through all of the posts and then getting the winners and.....

Also is it possible to get the submissions from FIRST? Some of the teams (bite my tongue) may not read CD so therefore wouldn't know to post. If you post the missing entries then maybe people on CD could contact the teams for a copy of their entry.

[Rich Kressly]

OK Steve, since we know ALL TEAMS are going to honor a special mentor with a WFA nomination in 2005 and they are looking to start now to avoid crunch time, we need those last ten 2004 winning nominations posted here to elevate that much needed inspiration!

looking here
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/wf...tail&year=2004
we see that the following nominations have not yet been linked/included:
Ken Ardizzone (108)
Tim Flickinger (27)
Frank Larkin (272)
George Perna (125) - Help us out here Erin!
Jay TenBrink (494)
Bill Vinnage (1038)
Rick Pierce (1164)
Andy Bradley (233)
Lender Luse (462)
Bill Soetebier (415)

If you know anyone on these teams, contact them and let them know we need to make this thread a complete and inspirational lead-in to a renewed effort to celebrate our mentors!! As you begin brainstorming/drafting your 2005 WFA essays, remember that this online submission process was incredibly user friendly in 04 and will be so again in 05. Also, remember our friend Andy Baker (who won some sort of an award wayyyy back in 2003) posted these helpful hints for WFA submissions from a judge's point of view:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...83&postcount=7

[Pat Major]

Here is the WFA for Jay TenBrink
Mr. Jay TenBrink is truly an inspiration, motivation, and encouragement to myself as well as the entire team. His enthusiasm for his engineering profession as well as his desire to share his learnings with others is always evident.
During our brainstorming sessions each year, Mr. TenBrink continuously reminds us that there is no such thing as a dumb idea. He encourages each of us to contribute, often calling on us by name. We always find ourselves building on one another’s ideas; hence what someone may have thought to be a silly idea inspires a brilliant idea in a teammate. Mr. TenBrink is also “quick with a pen” which allows him to capture our ideas on paper as he encourages us to sketch our design ideas and post them on the walls.
Mr. TenBrink makes learning fun for us. He is very safety conscious and insures we know the proper use of each of the tools. He’ll relate humorous stories about folks who failed to use them properly, to insure he gets his point across.
From a technical perspective, there is no better teacher than Mr. TenBrink. He illustrates complex principles on paper with mathematical equations, and then sketches the design principle, utilizing gears, levers, etc. He then provides examples of the principle in real life applications that always help us better understand and remember. A perfect example of this involves the continuously variable transmission we designed and built over the summer. We weren’t sure we fully understood how it worked until he told us it was the type of system used in most snowmobiles. That, we were familiar with!
Another teaching method that Mr. TenBrink uses to insure we understand the engineering concept is to have each of us explain it to him. We did this frequently as we were learning the scientific principles of dynamometer operation. The dyno is another Mr. TenBrink conceived and designed learning project that has become very special to each of us. It is very important to him that we expand our knowledge as much as possible and hence develops learning opportunities for non-competition months. As we built the dyno, out of a previous year robot parts, he taught us all about how it worked and then had us explain it to him. If we got stuck along the way, he would help us out, never making us feel bad, even if it took us three or four times. As a result of his working with us, just about all the team members could easily explain the dyno purpose and operation to the 75+ teams that utilized it during 2003.
Teamwork, another important value of Mr. TenBrink, has allowed each of us the opportunity to get to know one another better and appreciate the diversity we each bring to the team. He is always prepared with project lists that he assigns us to work on as teams. He focuses on the end result and encourages us to figure out the solution, making himself available to answer questions, if necessary
One additional aspect Mr. TenBrink brings to the team is his enthusiasm. It’s very contagious and gets each one of us excited about what we are learning. We tend to learn more that way and it really makes us feel good about ourselves when we go to a competition and are personally able to help other teams solve their robot problems based on our own learnings.
He teaches us by example daily that in the words of Paul Bryant, “It’s not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference.”

[Pat Major]

Mr. TenBrink checking to see how powerful Woodie is on our Dyno.

[Rich Kressly]

Let's start this thread back up for 2005. Link/add those 2005 winning WFA entries here so we can learn more about our heroes and be inspired!