Teacher Feature: Math teacher, Mr. Matthew Brunner, creates the Robotics Team

Geometry teacher, Mr. Matthew Brunner has been at McNicholas High School for two years. He has already made the school a better place.

Brunner has started up a new team at McNicholas High School: The Robotics Team. They are a group of students who program, design, and create robots to enter into competitions. This is the first year of the team. “This is the first year that I have coached a competition robotics team. I have hosted more relaxed STEM and other robotics type clubs for the past nine years, but never a competition robotics team,” said Brunner.

*Mr. Matthew Brunner preparing to teach math.*

The team’s next competition is next January or February. “The competition that we attend is a worldwide competition, which starts locally, moves to state then worldwide championship. Look up FIRST FTC for more details,” said Brunner. The Robotics Team has gone to many competitions already this year.

Brunner has had a strong interest in robotics and tech since he was a child. “I have been interested in robotics since I was a child. I always loved technology and how it can be used to interact with the world,” he says.

“When I was hired, it was made clear that we had a need for a robotics team, but they had nobody to fill the shoes. Robotics is something that I did at my previous school and so I thought it would be a perfect fit for me. I really enjoy coaching our competition robotics team!” said Brunner.

Expansion

Mr. Brunner has already made plans to expand on the team to make creating the robots more efficient. Brunner said, “Our robotics team has twelve students and two coaches. We are considering having two team next year, one will be the build team, who actively works on the robot. The other team will be the support team, who will work to help in other ways and learn from the build team to be future build team members.”