Most of you reading this are quite familiar with Gracious Professionalism® and Coopertition®. These are key ethos of the FIRST® experience across all programs and help guide us year round. You may not be as familiar with FIRST®’s core values. I’d bet that most folks would not know that the individual programs publish their own core values… and while similar – they’ve been different in each program.
Since each program was created and developed on their own separate timelines, choices on format and content developed differently too. FIRST®Tech Challenge has had the wonderful benefit to look at FIRST® Robotics Competition, FIRST®LEGO League and FIRST®LEGO League Junior for inspiration and best practices.
About 12 months ago a cross functional team was pulled together with a plan to synthesize these values, pulling them all together and developing a unified list. What a great project, and I can say the team who contributed finished it fully inspired.
These core values will show up in all programs' documentation starting this coming season – but for those of you who want to see them now here you go. Feel free to share them far and wide!
FIRST® Core Values:
To further unify the mission of FIRST® and create consistency as students progress through our programs, we have created a cross-program set of values that represents the FIRST®experience and the FIRST community. We are pleased to share with you the FIRST Core Values.
We express the FIRST philosophies of Gracious Professionalism® and Coopertition® through our Core Values:
• Discovery: We explore new skills and ideas.
• Innovation: We use creativity and persistence to solve problems.
• Impact: We apply what we learn to improve our world.
• Inclusion: We respect each other and embrace our differences.
• Teamwork: We are stronger when we work together.
• Fun: We enjoy and celebrate what we do!
Ken Johnson
Director, FIRST® Tech Challenge