Team Leaders

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Posted by Kate Leach, Student on team #166, Team Merrimack, from Merrimack High School and Unitrode / RS Machines.

Posted on 5/18/99 8:15 PM MST



I was wondering how teams designate who the team leaders or captains are? Or if you even have them at all.. Are students team leaders? Do they work with an engineer or teacher? Or is it the engineer or teacher that is the team leader? Who takes more charge, the students or the engineers? I've been wondering about these things for *at least* 2 years now.. Prolly more.. Input is always cool.. ;)

Kate
Team Captain '99
Team Merrimack #166

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Posted by Kate Leach, Student on team #166, Team Merrimack, from Merrimack High School and Unitrode / RS Machines.

Posted on 5/18/99 9:15 PM MST


In Reply to: Team Leaders posted by Kate Leach on 5/18/99 8:15 PM MST:



Alright, my team:

Students basically run the program.. We've got the teachers and engineers to help us when we need it.. We've got students as captains (myself being one of them but I'm sure you knew that by now) that are nominated and picked by all team members, teachers and engineers included I believe.. The teacher we had this year helped us more than others have in years past.. Many times I spent my Calculus class making an agenda for the meeting after school that day.. Sometimes she goes through the agenda, sometimes I do.. Depends on what kind of mood everyone is in..

Kickoff: We've always had a kickoff party the day following kickoff.. We've had either potluck or pizza in the past.. The students decide which they want and how they want everything to be organized.. We have students volunteer themselves to take different responsibilities of organizing the kickoff party.. Stuff like organizing the food, drinks, paper products, TV/VCR, brainstorming paper, stuff to write with, documentation of ideas, the agenda of the kickoff party.. Lots of things like that.. It's mostly done with the students that volunteer to do the work.. And if that doesn't happen then we ask someone to take on a task, or I do it with the help of my teacher.. Yeah, I love picking up the slack that my teammates leave me with.. Really.. ;)

Weekly meetings: Our team has meetings every Friday after school to get the team organized and up to date with everything.. That is, if they show up.. And if they don't then they don't get any brownie points.. Brownie points are good.. They help a lot with figuring out who is and isn't going to Florida.. We tell people when up and coming fundraisers are, and their whereabout locations.. And when we were in the robot construction and animation, we told everyone the status on all of it.. Information about the competitions, parties, parent meetings, and of the like..

Construction: We obviously hafta talk to our master machinist guy to see when we can come in.. But we got to set up the schedule of when we got to go to the machine shop to work.. I really like playing with those milling machines and lathes and the TIG welder and and and.. Well, you know.. But the students were allowed to use the machines.. Definitely if Rudy was there helping out.. And if you knew what you were doing and over 18.. He was pretty much cool with everything just so long as we were wearing safety glasses, didn't hurt ourselves or others, and didn't break his beautiful machines.. The students built just about as much of the machine as the engineers did.. The other captain and I welded the frame of the robot.. And Rudy welded our cage cuz we were running out of time..

Animation: Meetings started after 5:30 so the engineers would be out of work.. There were 2 Animation Leaders.. They worked out a schedule with the engineers with who would be there when.. And then the team worked on different scenes of the animation on assigned nights.. That schedule worked out pretty well.. There were a couple nights where the engineers played with the evil track view or for rendering.. The students did most of the animation..

Fundraising: We've got Jen.. She rocks.. Unfortunately, she's graduating with me this year.. She set up all the raffles that we had.. And the group fundraisers.. She took on this responsibility last year and carried it on through this year.. Now we're trying to train someone on how to do it for next year since she'll be gone.. We've got this wicked cool system for fundraising for the team.. But I'm gonna save that for a different post cuz it takes a while to explain and I'm getting a little tired now..

Chairman's Award: Whomever wants to do it does it.. We came up with the ideas for what kind of format we wanted to have.. And we proposed it to the team, they approved, of course.. ;) Then it was back on us.. It was basically the project of Beccy's and mine.. Unfortunately, the Chairman's Award is one of the aspects that we don't really focus on all too much.. It was thrown together at the last minute this year..

I don't think that I've left much (if anything) out about this year.. Next year we're having a trial run type of thing with the Captains.. We're having our 2 main captains, and then we're also having 'Captains In Training' next year.. They're basically going to be shadowing the Head Captains so they can learn for the following year so they're not totally in the dark like I was this year.. The Head Captains will be able to give the Captains In Training as much responsibility/power as they want to.. Not sure how well it is going to work.. Any other teams use this type of leadership system???


Kate Leach
Team Captain '99
Team Merrimack #166

Woah, I really didn't even realize that I rambled on for so long.. And it's wicked late now.. ;)

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Posted by Nate Smith, Student on team #74, Holland FIRST Robotics, from Holland High School and Haworth, Inc..

Posted on 5/19/99 4:24 AM MST


In Reply to: Team Leaders posted by Kate Leach on 5/18/99 8:15 PM MST:



We have one 'main' contact at our sponsor, and two teachers at the high school that organize most of the meetings and events...however, for all of our various subteams(engineering, web site, fundraising, etc.), they each have a subteam leader in charge of organizing that group.

As for student leaders, we never officially say 'ok, this person will be a team leader', but throughout the course of the year, one or two people who always seem to be at the meetings and working on various projects stand out, and these are the ones that all the other students ask for information. Also, these same people will often be asked their opinion on various ideas by the adult leaders.

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Posted by colleen, Student on team #126, Gael Force, from Clinton High School and Nypro.

Posted on 5/19/99 8:26 PM MST


In Reply to: Re: Team Leaders posted by Nate Smith on 5/19/99 4:24 AM MST:




our team runs itself much like Nate's.. we have an adult team leader who is the main coordinator of things. We also have a steering committee of adults who run the team, make decisions, those sorts of 'fun' things. also, each of our subteams have an adult team leader, but it is usually just for primary organization of the team and a few students tend to take lead roles with students. although the adults are great mentors for students, sometimes their peers are more convincable ones (peer pressure can work in the positive direction too). Major desicions in the business of the team are made by adults, but any desicions on robots, strategies, competition things, etc. are discuss within the whole team..

in a nutshell, adults are the team leaders, but there are always a few students who naturally become leaders, and no one is about it stop their efforts

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Posted by Shannon, Coach on team #191, XCATS, from Wilson Magnet High School and Xerox.

Posted on 5/24/99 11:05 AM MST


In Reply to: Ditto for us posted by colleen on 5/19/99 8:26 PM MST:



Our team is run by a leadership team comprised of both students and adults. Then we have an integration team to figure out what will be on the robot, also both students and adults. The adults handle travel and this year students handled rules. Students were coaches with help from the adults. The adults also helped with scouting.

I like how things are set up. The adults are always there when we need them, but they also let us feel like we have a lot of input in the team and what happens to it.

SHANN:)