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» Fairy Tail Challenge:

[Day 11] • Funniest Character • Juvia Lockser 

» Fairy Tail Challenge:

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Fairy Tail challenge 

  That has become my motto; “I’m busy.”

  However I’ll have something to show for it, because we are about 85% done with the robot as of yesterday. I’m excited for the kids and how far they have come and what they have learned. I have two students getting into the programming. So far I also have two drive teams.

  It’s also hard having to discipline a student my removing their driving privilege because they are disrespectful and I can’t trust them to listen to me during competition. I’m still giving the student a chance to regain the privilege of being included on the driving teams, but he has just dug himself a deeper hole lately. It’s frustrating because I know this student is talented and has the potential to do really well in FIRST and get a lot back from it. The trouble is getting him to take it seriously. He’s one of the few remaining students that I have to pull teeth with to get any kind of maturity from.

  A coach from another team visited us yesterday as well. He helped us get our geometry on the robot correct as well as assist greatly in the feeder and upper structure frame building. We worked together to try and get the students to realize how quickly competition would move and how quickly they would be required to fix or possibly rebuild the robot between matches.

  Overall, it’s a happy feeling this week as I see the team morphing and coming together to form a more solid unit that will be dependable during competition. The students are really starting to get the hang of thinking for themselves and working together. I’m amazed at the impact I’ve had on these students in just the two months or so that I’ve been working with them.

So, it's been hectic and I haven't had much time to update this, but here we go;

Asked for help from one of the high school FRC students. After discussion we determined that the robot hat we had (mostly complete btw) wouldn't work, due to a bent frame and a bad gear ratio and a over complex arm design.

Proceeded to tear robot apart and rebuild on a new conveyor design instead of our previous forklift design.

Said high school student that was helping us became more of a hindrance that a help and made a few of my students quite upset at his treatment of their concerns towards the robot change/rebuild. I spoke with my adviser (who also coaches the FRC team) and she spoke with the student i hope.

We however did continue with the conveyor design because of its simplicity and that the kids did recognize the advantages of the new design. Now come the challenges of regrouping everyone into the new design.

I am excited that all but like 3 of my students (i have like 10 i think, it changes a bit) are grasping my meaning when i try to tell them to think for themselves and to give themselves tasks to perform to get the robot done and that im here for help and questions. The others still depend on regurgitating exactly what i tell them.

And that a few students, mainly 2,are being so disrespectful every time i try to say something, even non robot related, that they never take me seriously. As punishment, until they earn my trust back and show respect they have lost the privilege to be driving the robot during matches.