Many know Susanna Ziemer as one of the Earth and Space Science teachers at West High. What people don’t know is aside from being a teacher, Ziemer has been coaching West’s FTC robotics team, Trobotix, for the past four years. Each week, Ziemer spends hours in room 16 helping out Trobotix with business endeavors and team structure. Ziemer shares a lot of valuable insight with the team, making significant contributions to their success.
WSS: Why did you become the teacher sponsor for Trobotix?
Ziemer: I became the teacher sponsor because I knew that, I guess at the time, there wasn’t anyone else on our staff who was interested, and I believed in the program. I knew a little bit about what it allowed students to do. I knew that it was going to help students really actively participate in project-based learning and learn all of these amazing 21st-century skills and just apply their understanding of science and math to a real thing. And I thought that needed to exist at West High, and so if there was anything that I could do to help keep it going, I wanted to make sure that it continued.
WSS: What is your role as a coach?
Ziemer: I see my role as a coach is to really try to enable my students to take the lead to just make decisions. I try to give them advice. But really, I just kind of try to give them support that they need, to give them the supplies that they need, make sure that they’ve got the right space and all those things. But I really want the students to take ownership over what they do and so, I try to give them advice but not get in the way when they’re making decisions.
WSS: What makes Trobotix unique?
Ziemer: I think as a club at West, it gives students a more realistic opportunity to experience a workplace. I think there’s a lot of clubs that give students good projects and access to a lot of information or incentivize them to learn about different kinds of skills or tasks. But I think Trobotix is unique in that it really brings everything into one place, where you’ve got to kind of figure out how to do all of the parts and pieces together in a way that I think is different than a lot of the opportunities we have.
WSS: What is your favorite memory with the team?
Ziemer: You know, it’s got to be our league tournament last year. It was so exciting. I just remember screaming in the stands with everyone when we were, I don’t know, we were killing it in our meet. Or, I guess, in our matches, that league tournament. And we didn’t think we were going to do bad, but we were doing exceptionally well. And it was just super exciting. And my favorite part was just cheering with the team and us all being encouraging to one another. So positive and fun.
WSS: How do you feel like the team evolved since you started coaching?
Ziemer: Oh my gosh, so much. When I first joined the team, it was a ton of really experienced students who had been doing FIRST programs for a long time; they knew exactly what they were doing. And the sad part was that for many of them, it was their senior year and it was also the year that COVID really interrupted and disrupted what we can do with FIRST. So we couldn’t go to any meets, and that was really hard. And the students had a lot of really good ideas, but they weren’t able to really do much of anything. And then they all graduated. And so then the next year, it was a bunch of new people who were eager to learn, and we were kind of, as a coaching staff, trying to figure out how to give them the resources and guide them enough, but not kind of take over them. And I feel like we learned a lot of lessons along the way of like, well, maybe we should have said do this first, you know more than we did. And then we kind of altogether figured out so much about how we wanted the club to be and we made great progress last year and this year.
The team has just matured so much. They really have a good understanding of the engineering design process. They’re following through with it. And I’m just super excited to support them at their upcoming meets and tournaments because it’s going to be amazing.
WSS: How do you feel like coaching has impacted you as a teacher?
Ziemer: I think coaching Trobotix has helped me learn a lot more about how I understand my students’ interpersonal relationships. Because you know, I have my memories as a student. But it’s different to be in a coaching setting where I’m spending more time where I’m not necessarily supposed to be instructing, or driving a certain task. So I’m just kind of alongside and checking in, and having more of those like casual interactions. And so I think it’s actually helped me really seek those out more in my classes, which has been fun, like finding the opportunities where I can just have casual conversations with my students. And I also think it’s just reinforced in my mind that I want to give my students opportunities to actually do a real thing whenever I’m able to.
WSS: What goals do you have for the team?
Ziemer: I mean, personally, as a coach, I just want the team to have everything they need to accomplish their goals. I want them to have a clearer idea, a clearer picture, of what their vision is for their progress this year. I want them to have fun. I think that’s one of my biggest priorities as a coach. To make sure that we’re not just working really hard on the team and making a really cool robot, but we’re enjoying that time we have together.
A personal goal for me is always just that I want our students to feel like they understood how to work better and better with people. And so anything that I can do to try to give them strategies when things get tough, or help ease people’s minds, or help people kind of process through something, or reflect on whatever they’re working on. I really like to do that because I think that helps them moving forward.
WSS: What are you looking forward to this season?
Ziemer: I’m just looking forward to continuing to work together as a team. I feel like it’s been exciting to see kind of how the team has come in with a much more clear vision of what the club is and what they’re going to do, and their timeline for things. I’m just excited to see all of those ideas come to fruition because I’m already seeing them come to fruition so much, like step by step. And it’s just exciting to continue to ride the wave and keep our momentum going.
