Hey all, this is Serena Simms and Hilary Bourgeois from Westcoast Newfoundland. We are excited to begin this new adventure with our grade 4 and 5 classes! We are new to FIRST! We have a lot of questions, but we are excited to begin this journey.

Hello! My name is Jessica Baker. My husband and I are new coaches and are helping to set up a program. Our kids are on a team coached by our area director. He is mentoring us as we learn what we need to do. This is definitely an interesting year to be starting!

Hi I am from New Orleans, LA. I have 2 FTC teams and I am starting an 8th grade club to feed into our FTC teams. Looking for ways to organize and keep interest in robotics. We are an all girls school.

Helllo everyone. My name is Tom Tomas, and this is my team's beginning year. Our team consists of five 6th graders who attend Little Singer Community School. We are eager, and would like to know if you were to recommend one mission to attempt this first year, which one would that be?

The resource we can offer this year is a steady stream of questions on how to get started.

Many thanks for all each person does to promote robotics, coding, and applications of engineering design processes.

Sincerely and Respectfully,
Tom Tomas
6th Grade Teacher
STREAM Program Coordinator
Little Singer Com. School

Hi Tom! I would recommend trying out the Innovation Project, Pull-Up Bar, and Step Counter if you do the LEGO lessons outlined in the Engineering Notebook. My team was successful in completing these missions with the basic, simple robot build. Also, within the LEGO unit plan, there is the guided mission- Boccia Share. That's another great way to attempt.

Hi My name is Danielle Cannon or Danie. I have been involved in FIRST for a number of years. I started out with my daughter in 4th grade in FLL she is a junior in High School now and we are still going. I have discovered more than just Robots in this journey. FIRST has given me a connection to my goat. I have watched this program affect so many students over the years. I live in Utah and know nothing about programming my husband and daughter both program. I DO NOT! However, I can and do turn wrenches. I love working with my hands. Our adventure in FTC started 3 years ago when my daughter was the only girl on the team of 4 students. We are now 10 strong and have 5 girls on the team. We did not compete the first year. We made it to state our second year and last year we took second at the State Championship. My husband works on the programming side of things and I coach the mechanic and business side of things. We are using Tetrix for our build and we have REV Expansion Hub for control we have ordered another expansion hub and a REV Control hub that we are waiting to receive. We purchased a 2nd Tetrix Competition set last year so that we have a robot to prototype with. We have touch and color sensors. My primary interest in this course was because I feel like I could be doing more for these students if I had more formal training on what I should be doing. So that was more than you asked for but it's me in nutshell.

Hello. I am Dave Fitch. I have a group of 6 girls from 8 years to 11 years old here on Maui. We competed this year with 4 members as a first year team. We are not affiliated with a school, rather a group of girls who are friends here and some use to be in school together before covid. We have meetings here on our pig farm in the barn! I am a woodworker by trade so building is the easy part. Imparting the core values and organizing a curriculum are my weak points! I am excited to be a better mentor for the girls in their stem education.

Hi,

I coach a new, FTC team at a Tier 1 high school Pennsauken, NJ. This is our second year.
I coached an independent FLL team for 4 years. We took 2nd place in programming at Worlds.
I teach physics (Conceptual, Honors, AP) and will be teaching PLTW Digital Electronics next year.
This is my 3rd year teaching.

Hello! My name is David Schick and I am a father of 3 (husband of 1) in San Mateo, California. Of my two oldest, one is in college and the other is almost in grad school. My youngest is a highschool sophomore and my co-maker of many messes and contraptions.

This is my first year coaching an FTC team, but I have had a couple of years coaching FLL (with a lot of help from elder coaches). I got involved this year to help my son and some of his classmates get some hands on time with a bot.

I will be using the REV FTC Starter Kit V3 and have ordered a color sensor. I have and Expansion and Control Hub, and one phone.

A personal side project of mine has been to create a space on the mid-peninsula where groups like scouts can meet and have access to a variety of tools and materials. I am testing this out a bit on my son and his troop and school friends once things get closer to normal.

Hi, my name is Riddhi. I am from Summit, NJ. Our school offers FIRST - we compete with REV and Tetrix. I am used to VEX robotics, but new to FIRST. Looking forward to the course.