Proto-Eagles First Meeting

Our first meeting went well. We discussed the FIRST Smart Moves Challenge and what our expectations should be for our team. We also voted on our team name, The Proto-Eagles! The team also began selecting their personal code names.

The team was very enthusiastic, and we spent the last part of our meeting breaking out the Field Elements and building them.

Our homework for the next week will be to look around us and take note of the various types of transportation that we encounter. The team has been instructed to come back next meeting with a couple of ideas for our Project. We discussed the importance of:

• Thinking about the Smart Moves Challenge


• Identifying a problem


• Coming up with a creative solution


• Sharing our findings with our community

One thing that I forgot to mention to the team specifically, but will do so now, is to check out the Project Topic Guide that is on the US FIRST web site. This page has a lot of good resources that the team can use for research.

FLL Coaches' Coffee

I attended a Coaches' Coffee today with other local FLL Coaches. It was a great time of sharing questions and answers. I continue to be impressed with the caliber of people who make up the GAFLL; the coaches are incredibly responsive to questions and input and are genuinely interested in seeing that the students involved in the FLL teams have as much support as possible. This is a community of sharing and mentoring, and I am grateful to the veteran coaches who are so eager to help newbies, such as myself.

A few of the ideas that came up:

• Have a good snack ready for the kids.


• Keep hand sanitizer handy, and remind the kids to use it.


• Use a white board or other large poster board to jot down a list of tasks that remain to be done so that the kids know what they can be working on as they find themselves with down-time.


• Regularly remind the team of the FIRST values.


• Make sure parents remember that FIRST is about the kids doing the work.