Lesson 1

The Class and the Team

This program runs two things that look similar from the outside and are not the same thing. One is a class you enroll in and get a grade for. The other is a competitive team you try out for and volunteer your afternoons to. They overlap heavily. This page explains the difference so nobody is surprised in September.

The short version

	ROV / ROV2 (the class)	Robotics Team
What it is	A graded CTE course	A volunteer competitive program
When	Tuesday and Thursday, 3:00 to 5:00 pm	TBD
Who can join	Students who have completed Exploring Computer Science and have a teacher recommendation	Students who clear the prerequisites below
Do you get credit	Yes, CTE credit toward the ICT pathway	No credit, no grade
Is attendance required	Yes, it is a class	Not formally, but showing up is how you stay on the team
Who runs it	Mr. B, as your teacher	Mr. B and other mentors, as volunteers
What you owe it	The work on the card list	Your time, and the same studio norms

The class: ROV / ROV2

The class is where you learn to build underwater robots. You do not need robotics experience and you do not need to be planning a career in ocean engineering. You do need to have finished Exploring Computer Science, and you need a teacher recommendation. Those are real prerequisites, not paperwork.

The class runs on three-week sprints. Each sprint ends at a pool day, and “done” means it worked in the water, not that you said it was finished. Inside a sprint you get roughly one lesson per week and the rest of the block is studio time for design, fabrication, and testing.

Two things structure your grade:

Lesson cards. There is a published card list covering the engineering process, water physics, electricity and fabrication, control and actuation, and software. You clear cards by demonstrating them, usually with your own measured numbers, a physical part you made, or code you can modify on the spot while I watch. Redos on cards are always open.
Status reports and a one-on-one. Every three weeks, at the end of the sprint, you turn in a status report covering what you did, what you decided, and roughly how many hours you put in. Track your hours as you go so you are not inventing them later. Then we sit down for a few minutes and talk through it. The report is what you wrote; the one-on-one is where you explain it. Status reports are not redoable. Late or missing is missing.

Your grade starts high and stays high by keeping your cards cleared, your reports in on time, and your contributions visible. Nothing here is a trap. It is also not a free A, which is the change from previous years.

The Robotics Team

The team is the group that competes. For 2026-27 that means MATE ROV, at the Monterey Bay regional in the spring, in the RANGER class. Other competitions may come later, FIRST among them, but nothing beyond MATE is on the calendar this year. The team owns the competition: registration, the technical documentation, the engineering presentation, mission runs on deck, and the outside pool days that no class period is long enough to hold.

The team is not a single company. It currently looks like four MATE companies under one roof, each with its own roster, its own leadership, and its own entry. Companies share the studio, share knowledge, and sometimes share code. They do not share a scoresheet.

The team runs on the same three-week sprint rhythm as the class, which is deliberate. Sprint deadlines land in the same place for everyone, so a company can plan around a pool day without translating between two calendars.

The team is entirely volunteer supported. I am a volunteer when I coach it, and so are the other mentors. That is the honest reason it works differently from the class. There is no attendance sheet and no grade protecting you. Attendance is technically voluntary, but staying on a roster is not. If you are not there, the work does not happen and your company notices. Being on the team is a privilege that depends on doing the work and following the studio norms, which are our version of Tom Sachs’ Ten Bullets. Show up on time. Write things down. Do the work.

Prerequisites

To be considered for the team, you must hold the standard athletic eligibility mark, a 2.0 GPA, and meet one of the following:

Option A, prior experience. One full season completed in the middle or high school robotics program, plus prior or concurrent enrollment in High School Programming with Robotics (commonly called ROV). Full season means active roster status maintained all the way through the final competition phase, not just signing up in the fall.

Option B, technical placement. Advanced placement by technical portfolio and a practical safety evaluation. Subject to space and my evaluation of demonstrated skill and safety competency.

The class is the front door. Everyone on the team comes through it or is in it right now.

How the two fit together

The class builds capability. The team converts it into a competition result. Most of the design, fabrication, and testing work happens in the class block, on the vehicles the companies are fielding, including Godzillah, our RANGER ROV, and Ebirah, our vertical profiling float. The team carries the leadership layer on top of that work, holding the named company roles, running the deliverable schedule, and answering for what shows up on deck in May.

Practically, the pipeline runs one direction. You come through the class, you build a record of cleared cards, honest hours, and status reports that show real decisions, and that record is what you are evaluated on when you try out for the team. The class is not a consolation prize for people who did not make the team. It is where the team comes from.