FIRST Robotics Competition

I listened to a podcast this morning with the founder of the FIRST Robotics Competition. This is a competition for both Jr. high and high school students in which they compete in a variety of robotics events. I have heard a little about this competition before, but there is still a lot I want to learn about it. The mission of FIRST is to get students interested in and excited about science and engineering. As an up-and-coming technology teacher I am very interested in this also. I want to show students how cool robotics can be.
Listening to this podcast got me excited about teaching. I totally want to be able to put a team of students together to participate in this event. I think the founder they were talking to said that they had over 10,000 high school teams involved in the competition this past year. That's an amazing amount of students. As I thought about how to introduce the idea of this competition to my future students, I decided I want to begin talking about it very early in the school year. I will then tailor my curriculum to preparing my students for the events. I think students will get excited about this and work hard to do well in it.
I also think it would be great if I were able to build up an electronics and robotics program at a school that did not previously have one. There are great teachers out there who are already doing amazing things at various schools, I don't want to just get put into one of the many programs they have already set up, I think it would be much more rewarding to allow those students who may never have the chance to learn about robotics to do it. I'm sure it's a lot harder, but at the end of the day, a school will be a better learning environment because of it.