Another huge gift from FIRST — this time a full two-semester engineering course. The FIRST Tech Challenge Crossroads Curriculum is roughly 90 hours of class time, designed to be taught as a year-long career-and-technical-education class. It walks students from “Why FIRST?” all the way to a finished engineering portfolio, by way of a competition robot they built themselves.
We can’t do all 90 hours this summer. We can absolutely cherry-pick the units that move us toward our season goals.
Click here for the full syllabus guide.
What Crossroads covers
Eleven units across two semesters. The full sweep:
Semester 1 — getting a robot built and competing
- Why FTC? — Why FIRST, FTC Robots, Decompose a Robot
- Team Plan & Robot Plan — Project Management, Safety Plan, Engineering Design Process, Game Plan, Robot Plan
- Robot Systems — Chassis Design, Electrical Theory, Pairing & Configuration, Building Manipulators (including the physics fundamentals: speed, torque, gear ratios, moments)
- Computational Thinking — Algorithms, Decomposition & Flow, Data Types, Autonomous
- Sprint to Compete — Understanding Problems, Sprints for Events, Competition & Presentations
Semester 2 — leveling up and engaging the community
- Community Impact Plan
- Iteration & Redesign — Design & Simplicity, Loads & Forces, Ownership & Aesthetics, Mini-Comp
- Advanced Automation — Mechanical Advantage, Pulley & Chain Systems, Compartmentalization & Feedback
- Advanced Computational Thinking — Cumulative Error, Compartmentalizing Code, Abstraction, Augmented Reality, Object-Oriented Programming
- Iteration & Redesign 2
- Career Discovery & Goal Setting — Skill Identification, Resumes / Portfolio / Digital Badges, From Class Pack to Qualifying Teams, Community Impact & Presentations
That is, end to end, a serious engineering education. Far more than any rookie team can absorb in one summer.
Our cherry-pick for Summer 2026
Going zero to 90 hours in three months isn’t realistic. So we’re picking units that line up directly with what we already know we’ll need this season:
- Why FIRST + FTC Robots + Decompose a Robot — foundational orientation for every new team member.
- Project Management + Engineering Design Process — the spine of every successful FTC season.
- Robot Systems — the chassis, electrical, and manipulator content pairs perfectly with the BIOBUZZ Skill Builders and the StarterBot Bases.
- Computational Thinking + Autonomous — layers cleanly on top of the Coach Pratt Java tutorials and the Virtual Robot Emulator work.
- Community Impact Plan — directly supports our run at the Rookie All-Star Award.
- Career Discovery & Goal Setting (especially the engineering portfolio piece) — judges read this; we want it sharp.
Topics we’ll likely punt to in-season or to year 2: Advanced Automation (pulley/chain systems), Object-Oriented Programming, and Augmented Reality. Not because they aren’t valuable — they are — but because we have to focus.
How this fits with everything else
Together with the BIOBUZZ Skill Builders, the four StarterBot Bases, the Coach Pratt video tutorials, and the Learn Java for FTC book, the Crossroads Curriculum gives us a structured, almost-entirely-free, summer-long learning path.
We are not short on materials. We are not short on direction. We just need hours.
The specific weekly plan — which units we tackle which week, who leads which session, and how we measure progress — will live on our upcoming Goals for Summer 2026 page. This post is the announcement: yet another excellent FIRST resource has landed in our laps, and we intend to use it.
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