Pentucket Regional Middle High School, which includes the towns of West Newbury, Merrimac and Groveland, is establishing a robotics and engineering program in grades 7-12. With our brand new $150 million school complete, we have an entire space of over 3000 sq feet that is dedicated to become a robotics workshop and we have created a new teaching position to teach HS classes on robotics and advanced manufacturing. We are also doing the the following:
Starting an FRC team to compete in the spring of 2024 “The Aluminum Panthers”
Investing close to $300,000 in industry grade equipment, tools and systems to outfit the workshop (water jet, lathe, drill press, carbon fiber 3D printer, CNC Router and other tools)
Purchase of the necessary computers
Establishing an Innovative Pathway program for Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering with industry related internships and partnerships
Developing curriculum for a course sequence from 7th grade through 12th
We are looking for a talented and highly committed individual who is interested in becoming the teacher to lead this program and help start the FRC team, with more industry mentors to join. This individual will also have the opportunity to shape and design the workshop space for both the classes to be developed and for the FRC team. The position is posted here and there will be additional opportunity through grant funding to provide stipends for curriculum development and FRC team Leadership. Funding for the first year of FRC and all equipment/ tool needs will be done by the district with no need for this individual to manage funding in the first year.
If you are interested, or know someone who may be, please encourage them to apply. Typically, we do not take inquiries for teaching positions, however, this is a unique opportunity and interested parties may contact me directly with questions. We will of course need additional FRC mentors, especially those with some experience. If you live or work in the area of the 3 towns in MA, and you are interested in helping to establish this rookie team, please contact me as well. We have a group of knowledgeable, and talented HS students, who have been engaged in coding, CAD design, electrical engineering classes and other similar programs who have already expressed sincere interest and understand the commitment involved - but now just need the adult leader.
We also started a SPIKE Lego curriculum for grade 7 and 8 students this year, with over 150 students taking semester classes and showing sincere interest. This is an amazing opportunity for the right person. The school district is fully behind this effort, students are highly interested, we have a “feeder” program and we have the space and resources to make this a high impact and successful program. Feel free to contact me with any questions -
I once took a position like this in a District with only an FRC team (which I was already involved with). Having a whole STEM pipeline in place is a massive advantage! Whoever gets this position use your classroom time to push students into the programs. Here in Michigan we could even earn credit for participating in robotics if they are unable to be part of the formal class offerings. This can get students in as freshman who don’t have schedule space til later for “Exploratory” classes.
Having a professional in the district, during the day time hours, meeting new students and being able to field questions will be a huge advantage as well. Make sure to put it to best use!
This is an absolutely incredible opportunity, for both the mentor and the students in the school. It’s great to see more schools investing in robotics.
Do you have relevant industry experience? If so Career Technical Education you can start teaching in many states with just an associate’s or certs in your field and then pursue your teaching degree over the next 5-10 years. At least in Michigan that works as an Annual Occupational Authorization (you need to work X number of hours in your field over a period of the last 5 years). Finding people with both relevant Work History and a Teaching degree is really hard. Therefore they let people who want to teach teach while becoming fully licensed teachers. But this way the classrooms get filled with qualified instructors that know the industry those students are heading into.
A district would much rather have a qualified CTE instructor over a gen ed Teacher doing STEM because of the Pell Grants and other sources for CTE funds. A regular teacher doing AP comp sci for example might get $1,000ish for their yearly budget. CTE Java Programming gets maybe $8,000 or more because of the available funding for the relevant work history in the instructor. The course work is similar, maybe CTE has more paperwork for audits to make sure you are using the funds correctly and being a fully active CTE instructor with for instance a Career Tech Student Organization cough FIRST cough
I’d like to offer any assistance from 2713 as we are somewhat close by, but from the sounds of it, we might be asking you for help…
Best of luck! Feel free to reach out if you need anything in the process. There are a lot of great teams in our area that would be willing to help (125, 4909, 6324, 3467 just to name a few) so I think you will be just fine (especially with how much you’ve already established…).
I hope to compete with/against you guys and ask a large number of questions about how you got here.
Definitely count 6328 in the group available to help and answer questions, though I’m sure we can also learn a lot from how you’re getting set up! Looking forward to seeing new teams on the field in 2024.
Many schools like our State, are now hiring professionals outside the teaching field to work in our schools. Its an alternative certification program that pays by experience comparable to the same number of years worked by teachers. In the past, it was a major hurdle into getting people into the profession later in their careers.
With the new teacher contract just approved in Hawaii, 12 month teachers now can max out at $127k/year. That’s pretty good considering the number of paid holidays, sick leave, and paid vacation with winter breaks off.
Hi!
I’m planning to startup an FTC team to compete in next season and I don’t have most of resources needed yet , I would highly appreciate if you could help me
Pell Grants for CTE? Do you maybe mean Perkins funding? I’ve never heard of Pell doing CTE grants, but I could be (and often am) mistaken. And yes, FIRST absolutely is a CTE STEM CTSO (I know, too many acronyms ). I wish FIRST would acknowledge that.
