Jenny Hayward is everyone’s mom!   Helping with the team for the last three years, Jenny has been an essential part of the team especially this year.   Due to the economic strain, the team mentors have had trouble balancing work obligations with their team volunteering time.   We also lost our head mentor due to family obligations.    With inconsistent help from our mentors, the head sponsor has relied heavily on Jenny’s help with duties that are usually filled by our mentors such as supervising students when using power tools and hunting for the elusive and critical robotic part.

 In addition to fillinga i n for t h e engineering mentors, she continued to help with her normal duties. Due to the lack of help this year, the team sponsor was more involved with the robotic construction and relied on Jenny to help with publicity and spirit crew activities.  With her lifetime involvement in sports and her love for our high school, Jenny has wonderful suggestions and the students can rely on her honest opinions. She contacts parents to coordinate snacks and meals for feeding the hungry team during those long construction hours. The team is excited when she provides the food because Jenny is an awesome cook!  

Jenny is always willing to provide transportation for the team.  She often takes students home after meetings.   She drove the team to Richmond for the Kick-off in January.  Loading her car with tools and suitcases for the Regional Events, she has provided the critical overnight supervision of the team for the last three years, changing her personal schedule in order to help.

Jenny finds jobs for students who are not busy.    Assigning clean up duties to students in an equitable manner, she is essential in keeping the work area organized and clean so that it is not left for the school custodian or the team school sponsor. She is often one of the last adults to leave ensuring that everything is in good order.   Jenny has helped with the acquiring of funds for the team.  As an employee of Scitor, her family donated money to the team which in turn was matched by Scitor. 

Always cheerful and willing to listen, Jenny is available to the students despite feeling under the weather due to health issues.   She gives of her time over and beyond robotics. She helps with other organizations within the school such as the athletic boosters and the academic team. She hand-knitted a scarf for a robotic team member’s birthday and helped another student in the shop when he needed to cut wood for his science fair project.  Osbourn High School is fortunate to have this lovely lady as a volunteer.  Our robotics team is proud to call her Team MOM!