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New Year, renewed focus!  And regardless of how or where you celebrate the new year, there is never a time of year that it isn't important to think about  giving back . That means something different to different people. For some, it's giving back to their community: community service, donating time or money, and even volunteering. For others, it's spending time with family: building snowman, taking a hike along a beach, or even just staying home and playing board games. There are thousands of ways to define giving back, and one of those ways within our FIRST � community, is Gracious Professionalism� . Gracious Professionalism is "a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community." Our top teams and volunteers exhibit this quality on the competition field, at home in their communities, and even online. This characteristic is strongly represented in our teams that become our Inspire ...

To the FIRST Tech Challenge program and whoever else's eyes this message finds its way to:               Oh, where to begin? I suppose a brief introduction. My name is Isaac and I am a Senior at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio. For years, I would stay after school, sit in the cafeteria, and see this group of kids working on something, which appeared to a robot of some kind. Last year is when I really started to understand. Some of my closest friends are on Walnut's FTC team, 6133 THE NUTS!, and through my school and through some team bragging of how amazing it was, I became extremely interested. Still I decided to ignore whatever this robotics team was, as it didn't seem to be the thing for me. How wrong I was! THE NUTS! went to Worlds that year, and came home to Walnut as heroes.         A year passed, and I was asked to help set up for a regional FIRST Tech Challenge competition. I agreed, knowing that my fr...

The FIRST Tech Challenge season is well underway and we are fast approaching the first events of the season , which always gets us thinking about the super volunteer community of FTC. We interviewed Outstanding Volunteers across the globe to create our first ever top ten list: Why Volunteering with FTC Rocks! #10: It is a great excuse to play with robots! For all those adults who are still kids at heart, this program is for you. At FTC, we embrace our geekiness and share our excitement over gadgets and technology. Still recall your LEGOs, erector sets, and blocks fondly? This is the place for you, too. #9: It�s a chance to use some of the knowledge locked up in your brain. Mentoring young people is important work for the young people, but also puts some of that knowledge and experience of adults to use! Whether you are a writer, planner, scientist, engineer, cheerleader, organizer, or leader, your skills are needed! #8: It�s an opportunity to learn something new. Everyone learns wi...

Photo credit: Scott W. Nichols from the The Webb School �What do you want to be when you grow up?� Who hasn�t been asked that a million times by adults? And when we were little, we would answer that question with whatever felt right to us in the moment: �Unicorn.� �Fire fighter.� �Astronaut.� "Superhero" �Ballerina.� �Doctor.� "Teacher." And we knew in our heart that we could be the thing we wanted to be, and more often than not we were encouraged to pursue our dreams. And when our dreams changed, we wholeheartedly pursued the new dream. And then one day the question became harder to answer. Why? We live, we learn, and we start to judge what our heart wants as attainable or not based on our beliefs about ourselves and our ability to achieve the dream. A boy dreaming of being a ballerina might only see pictures of girl ballerinas and develop the belief that boys can�t be ballerinas. Or a girl might dream of being an astronaut until someone says, �Girls with glasses...