*It has come to my attention that people are not receiving my emails the way I usually send them, so I am trying a new way. I apologize if you have unsubscribed through the website and are receiving an unwanted email. I will be sending emails this way in the future. Thanks for your patience.

If you are new to this email this is the place where you will find all of the Washington specific FIRST LEGO League information. Coaches and team administrators in the FIRST system for the CITY SHAPER season will be added weekly. Starting this season, every email from me will be numbered. That number lets you know which update it is, if you miss an update you can find it on our website.

I have 5 items for you today-

1.Kickoff Events

2.FIRST Sweepstakes

3.Grant Updates! Collins Aerospace just added!

4.FIRST Washington’s DEI Workshops

5.Team Registration at firstinspires.org open

We have several kickoff events this season! See below for details!

We will be holding this event later than we usually do to help with the school teams forming in September. The format will also be changing slightly to accommodate for our team growth. This event will be a coaches workshop, with multiple sessions for coaches to attend like in the past, without the student team members present.

Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center (main building – not the annex)

127 S Mission St, Wenatchee, WA 98801

Agenda:

9:00 – 9:30 Doors open, Team Check in

9:30 – 10:00 Welcome introduction

10:00 – 10:30 Core Values Team Building Activity

10:30 – 11:00 Project Plans “Thinking like an Engineer” through projects

11:00 – 11:30 Robot Design (Introduction to the planning toolbox)

11:30 – 12:00 Wrap Up

Teams should plan to attend with their robots and devices. Additional devices will not be available, but there will be a complete practice board set up for planning. (Note: there will NOT be wifi available, so teams should plan to use direct connections or blue tooth to send code to the EV3s.)

Teams are welcome to bring snacks or sack lunches, but the event will wrap up promptly at noon to accommodate another event at 1PM in the Museum.

Now through September 17, 11:59 pm ET, any team who has completed their 2019-2020 FIRST LEGO League season registration will be entered to win a LEGO® MINDSTORMS EV3 robot. All details, official rules, and link to no-purchase entry form are on the FIRST LEGO League landing page:https://info.firstinspires.org/firstlegoleague-2019-sweepstakes.

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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!

2.) FIRST Washington grant: Open Now.Deadlines are:FIRST LEGO League September 19.To apply:https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/8e944e032ad74f98864853f98fa03a44.

3.) OSPI, iGrants: Open Now. Deadlines September 19 for FIRST LEGO League. 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, and they must log in under the school, not the district for these are building level grants.FIRST LEGO League: form 605,

Other opportunities:

4.) Microsoft: Teams who have a Microsoft employee involved as a coach/mentor not only will benefit tremendously in building their programming, computer science and engineering skills and soft skills, Microsoft will generously match their hours of volunteering with your team at $25/hour. Many FIRST Washington teams leverage this generous partnership and we encourage you to go find a Microsoft employee and invite them to your team!

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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!

1.Saturday, September 28^th: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m., Lewis and Clark High School, Spokane. Thank you Titanium Tigers, FRC team 2944 for hosting! RSVP: (Coming)

2.Saturday, October 5^th: 10 a.m. -2 p.m. Seahome High School, Bellingham. Thank you Seamonsters, FRC team 2605 for hosting! RSVP here.

3.Saturday, November 16^th, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m., Environmental Learning Center, Point Defiance. Thank you SOTABots, FRC team 2557 for hosting! RSVP here.

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Registration for new and returning teams is open now!Registration closes when our region reaches capacity for the season, so register early!If capacity is available, registration will stay open until the end of September or early October (but is not guaranteed to be open that late).

*A note on registration. They did add the option to opt out of the challenge set for those registering multiple teams that don’t need multiple sets, but there is no way to buy the challenge set at a later time. If you opt out you WILL NOT be able to go back and order one separately.