History
Part III: Our New Friends and Alliances
Chapter I: Giving Back
Now, seeing what a wonderful campus we were placed on, we felt it was time to reach into our kind hearts and let those who couldn’t hear, or who are hard of hearing, to come see what amazing things we had experienced and to inspire them to use science and technology and go into the fields as engineers and scientists. We had our first two MKSD students join our team. We welcomed them with open arms. But for one student who couldn’t speak and another who could, gave us a huge barrier to work around. But as time went on we managed to overcome the barrier and made them right at home by learning sign language, along with our new recruitment of freshmen. As time went on while we were building the robot our Chairman’s team was quite busy with ideas which grew into what we called IFADs and our goals for our future. We worked hard and gave back to the community in many ways with food drives and helping Home Front and the Kiwanis. We where proud of our chairman’s essay and as we were to submit our luck had gone sour and our submission, something we all poured our heart into, hadn’t worked and had submitted a minute after the deadline. Our chairman’s team had cried from heart break to not have our submission, something we had tried so hard on, fail because of our internet connection.
Chapter II: We All Know What This Shall Be...
Trenton once again! Seeing friends on the other team and looking at the pretty robots. “Oh look! There is WALL-E!” “WHERE IS TEAM WALDO?! WHY ARE THEY NOT HERE?!?” We all had fun and saw that our students from MKSD were excited and happy to see the competition. We cheered for other teams as well as our own robot. We did well but ended up being defeated. But to our surprise we did not go unrecognized as we were awarded a Judges award! And with that we kept our heads held high for Annapolis.
Chapter III: Down By The Bay
We made our way through the streets and found our way to Washington DC once again. We explored where we left off last time we were there and eventually made it to Annapolis. We had made more friends and even our mascot gained a small fan club of a British team! We where more determined to keep our title of champions at this regional. We kept ourselves from getting distracted but to our misfortune but we didn’t get picked for an alliance team. However, we came home with experience to better ourselves for next year and to that we cheered.
Chapter IV: Spreading IFADS
Though defeated we still hadn’t given up on our IFADS dream and we had sent one MKSD student and a few mentors to Atlanta to spread our dream. We passed out fliers and made connections to a FIRST Lego League team hoping we could make this work, hoping that we could make IFADs something great! They sat in lectures that were about different parts of a team for our benefit. We also became a part of the Green Team, a beta tester for a potential fundraiser through FIRST. We also cheered for 75 as they were there. As the competition closed we made progress for all of our goals.
Accomplishments
Intermediate Year
- Trenton Judges Award
Our Robot
- 2008-2009; Gordo
History In The Making
- Entered the President's Circle
- Interviewed for our local newpaper and cable channel
- Eye glass and hearing aid drive with Mercer County
- Created a Student Handbook that includes:
- Steering Committee
- Parental Service Obliations
- Student Minimum Fundraising Obligations
- Community Service Hours
- Public Relations
- New Budget
- Held an Open House, Cook out, and Food Drive. Mayor Jack Ball and Don Cox ,a member of our Town Council, attended
- Help fix up and paint the 'Safety Town' houses with the Kiwanis Club
- Help the Kiwanis Club Pasta Dinner
- Helped Lion's Club with Eyeglass Recycling Center at Marie Katzenbach school for the deaf
- Working on including and getting deaf schools involved in FIRST Robotics
- Created a week long program for the Marie Katzenbach's students about building and thinking about different approaches challenges
- Started a 'Mock' Lego League with Trenton Charter School
- Assisted Ewing's Antheil Elementary School's Odyssey of The Mind
- Participated in Project David with other J&J sponcered teams
- Displayed our robot at Ewing's National Night Out and Community Fest
- Made a tee shirt shooting robot
- Displayed our robot at Marie Katzenbach's 125th anniversary celebration
- Officialy recognized by Ewing's Board of Education
- Upper Classman's trip to Montreal, Quebec Province, Canada
- Participated in Ewing's Independence Day Parade
- Participated in 3 off season competitions
- Asked to help out with a special event called "Girls In Gear"
- Held several food drives and donated to the Home Front