Just a reminder that event preference selection closes this Thursday at 9:00 am pst.Most of you have already gone in and picked your preferences but we still have a few teams that have not made a selection yet.Remember, you must select your home event to be placed in it. I have had several coaches comment that they didn’t think they needed to do anything to be placed in their home event so I just want to be sure everyone realized you do need to make a selection.FIRST should be notifying teams of the event they are placed in on Friday.
If you end up on the wait list for your home event, please wait until next Tuesday to email me.I will be watching and will work with FIRST to get anyone moved off the waitlist if they are waitlisted for their home event.
If you are waitlisted for an event that is not your home event, please give me until next Wed to evaluate what space we have in each of our events and move teams off the waitlist.If you email me before Wed, I will likely not respond because I will be working with FIRST to get as many teams placed in events as I can.
2.Grant opportunities – FIRST Washington Grant closes next Thurs, Oct 3.EVERY FRC team should apply!
FIRST Washington has a number of competitive grant opportunities for teams and we encourage your team to apply! All of these grants are made possible by generous donors, with emphasis going toward assisting disadvantaged teams in need. With FIRST Washington’s commitment to bringing FIRST programs to more communities and schools, it is our goal to help teams to be self-sustaining within three years. If you need help in building out your team sustainability plan and fundraising training, please let us know. We want to see you be successful in not only programming and building a robot, but building strong business and team collaboration skills!
1.FIRST Washington grant: Open Now. Deadlines are: October 3, 2019.To apply: http://bit.ly/FIRST_WA_Grant_2019 As of this morning less than 1/3 of teams have applied.This grant is open to all FRC teams.
2.OSPI, iGrants: Open Now. Grant closes: October 10. This generous grant is a building grant for Washington teams only who must compete in FIRST Washington competitions during the 2019-2020 school year. Teams must be public school-based or sponsored by the school. To complete the grant, please work with your school finance office or CTE to complete this grant and they must log in under the school, not the district for these are building level grants. FIRST LEGO League: form 605, FIRST Tech Challenge: form 606, FIRST Robotics Competition: form 424. If you are a public school,you need to apply for this grant, we have not had many applicants as of yet.
3.FIRST Washington’s DEI Workshops this fall!
With FIRST Washington’s commitment to equity and access, we are pleased to partner with three of our FIRST Robotics Competition teams to host half day workshops for all coaches, mentors and volunteers. We have a professional DEI facilitator, Tareena Joubert joining us for these days.
The goal of these workshops is to support our communities, coaches and mentors in welcoming all students. Part of the success in recruiting students is broadening our base of coaches/mentors and volunteers who look like students. Helping FIRST broaden our base of adults to include more women, persons of color, diverse professional backgrounds will help us position FIRST programs as inclusive and welcoming to all. Please join one of these workshop by signing up today to learn some tips and tools on how you can assist!
The Saturday 9/28 and Saturday 10/5 workshops have been rescheduled for later in the year. Stay tuned for more information!
1.Saturday, November 16th, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m., Environmental Learning Center, Point Defiance. Thank you SOTABots, FRC team 2557 for hosting! RSVP here.
·10-19-19:FIRST Fair hosted by 3131 – click here for more information
·10-26-19:Mentor Round table hosted by 4488
·11-16-19:Diversity, Equity & Inclusion workshop hosted by 2557 – Click here to register
·11-16-19:FRC Workshops hosted by 2557 – For more information or to register, click hereSOTA is looking for workshop presenters, please fill out the bottom of the registration form or contact Ken Luty kwluthy@gmail.com if you are interested in presenting.
·TBD:FRC Workshops hosted by 4911 – please stay tuned for more info, once they have a date confirmed, I will include a registration link.
6.Girls Gen Washington
There are still two spots open for Girls Gen.If your team is interested, please contact Darren Collins dcollins@tahomasd.us
