FIRST and grades
 

Earlier this year, at the Western Canada regional, I was doing the interview portion of my Chairman's Award presentation and I was asked an interesting question. The judges asked if our students membership on the team had improved their grades. I thought this was odd since from my experience being dedicated to the team had a negative or neutral effect on grades for our students. As much as we may wish that the stuff you do in FRC was used in school, this seems to be rarely the case. Additionally, build season should get you behind in school because much of your time is occupied and there is little time to do homework and study.

I'm wondering how FRC has impacted you and your students grades?

Re: FIRST and grades
 

My grades definitely went down since joining the team. Not by much and not to the point where my grades are a problem, but they did go down.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

Our students have to keep their grades up to be able to travel - Nothing below a C in academics, nothing below a B in their technical trade. And it's not our team rule, that's a school rule. All of our kids rise to the occasion - a number of our students are National Honor Society kids and all of them are taking honors and AP classes, and make honor roll.

One of the most rewarding things is to see a student bust their butt to get their grades up to be able to travel after missing out on travel a previous year due to grades.

We do tell the kids that homework and school comes first (they are students first after all) and to come to us if they're having an issue and we'll help them the best we can. Most of the kids will come to the room early (our meetings don't start until 6) and work on homework and stuff during build season so they don't have to do it when they get home.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

We do not directly track grades from before the team to after the team. Although we do check the schools list for ineligible students and will get after them and work with them to help improve their grades. This is rarely the case though, most of our students do not every hit that list becaus they have other school sports that they are apart of.

As part of our meetings we encourage students to bring their homework or things they are stuggling with for help. Students help students and the coach is a science teach who can help with those subjects. We even encourage this for build season even though they do sometimes take advantage that it counts for build hours.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

In high school my grades stayed the same during build season, if they didn't I wasn't allowed to go till they returned to where they were before.

In college as a mentor my first year I had issues with balancing: mentoring, schooling, working, and social life. My best advice to college mentors, or anyone in High School looking to be one after: schedule your class selections so during the Winter/Spring semester to be easy non-degree oriented classes. (This year I took Cultures of The Amazon, Unknown Knowledge, Nutrition, and Biology. I am a Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Major.)

Re: FIRST and grades
 

My grades went up during build, but dropped during competition season. Traveling is what kills grades because you're at least missing 2 days of school, maybe 3 if you're traveling far. It's hard, especially in high school in the middle of the year, to come back and be caught up after missing at least two days of instruction.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

I doubt FRC had a positive effect on my grades in high-school; likely the opposite, as the time requirement for build season certainly cut into the time I spent doing schoolwork.

That said, I don't regret it one bit. I likely got more out of FRC than I got out of the rest of high school combined.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

Yeah, as an FRC mentor in college your spring semester needs to be filled with less difficult courses. Of course there is going to come a point where you can't do that anymore....

While I was in high school my grades did go down a little during build season but not by much that it impacted my GPA...etc.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

We are a garage team and have no school sponsoring us. However, academics are a huge push for the team.

I have been told that the teens’ grades have taken some small hits. The most common issue that I have heard is attendance. We have had to have teachers “mislabel” FRC regionals and Champs so that it does not directly impact whether or not the students pass essential classes.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

When I was a student, my grades were always higher in the spring then in the fall. FIRST gave me extra motivation to work efficiently.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

This is a great question.
I'd like to offer a couple followup questions:

How do teams ensure that students grades stay up and/or improve?

What policies do teams have for student grades?

What are suggestions to help students who have lower grades, but clearly *need* this FIRST experience in their lives?

Re: FIRST and grades
 

We require a minimum of a C in every class. If any student gets bellow a C they are not allowed to travel with the team.

We as mentors are not allowed to see any of the students grade but our teacher sponsors check them on a regular basis.

The travel rule becomes a good stick, if a student falls below a C they must work out a written plan with their teacher in the class to bring their grade up. This has been a successful and positive policy for the students.

Also all students must get permission from all their teachers to miss days in school.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

I've mentored several teams that monitor students' grades, and one that actively tutored students. This is a great way to pull in timid potential mentors: So many great potential mentors beg off of FRC because they believe themselves to be under-qualified, but mentoring in a subject they are confident in is a very gentle trojan horse. This has a very positive effect on students' grades... I'm not as convinced that monitoring has a positive effect.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

1. Offer a study hall before meetings for homework to be done if mentors or teachers are able to be there. We don't meet until 6pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays so students are able to go home and do homework or stay at school.

2. We follow our school's policy for travel (see above) - C or better in academic subjects, B or better in technical trade.

3. See number 1 - study hall or make an expectation that students seek extra help before going to robotics. Or have team members offer to tutor those who are struggling.

We do this too.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

If anything, I would say that FIRST has a negative effect on grades. I know that my son's grades went down when he was involved (graduated in 2009). However, I have found that grades are an artificial measure of progress at best. I would say the experience gained by the kids, in math, science and engineering, as well as working in a team environment, problem solving, etc. far outweigh the temporary negative impact on grades.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

Our students have the same rules as any other extra curricular participant, which in the case of our district means a minimum 2.0 GPA, no failures. We certainly have students who become more serious about school because of FRC, and as a result their grades improve. And we have students who spend too much time during build season. In the past this was a bigger problem, and as a result we changed our build season by cutting down on build time.

We meet two days a week after school from 3:00 - 5:00, two evenings a week from 6:30 - 8:30 (sometimes 9:00) and Saturdays from 9:00 - 4:00. At the end of build season we will sometimes throw in a Friday or an extended Saturday. We also have some outreach events during build season (though we try to do these more outside of build). We used to spend more time. And there were years when we worked 6:00 - 10:00 every evening for the final three weeks. I realized this was not healthy more family, and that realization made me focus on the fact that it was not good for the kids either. Most kids are not there every evening. We had about 45 kids who worked on the robot this year (plus more who mainly did outreach stuff or were learning programming or other tasks) so we have different component teams meet when it is best for those teams. I think this has largely mitigated the negative effect on grades for most students. (I also think that the attention to the process of building the robot our downshift in time necessitated has allowed us to make better robots.)

We are in the middle of a project to collect data to try to examine the effect of FIRST participation on grades and other achievement measures.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

I'd be interested in seeing this data.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

As others have said - team rules dictate that if students don't have at least a C- in every course, they don't travel. Concessions have been made on an individual basis with teachers who have requested that students travel even though they don't meet the grade requirement - teachers recognize the experience of 2 days at event would have a greater impact on the student than 2 days in class. Usually there's extra classwork for these kids.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

I really like the no grades below a C thing. For our school ineligibilty is determined based on if you have 1 or more F's or 2 or more D's.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

I agree with this, as unintuitive as it sounds at first.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

My son is on 1986. This is his 3rd year on the team. I know his GPA has gone up each year. They have a rule: Before anyone can go into the shop or start any working pertaining to the robot or current season they must complete their homework. A couple of the mentors and one of the coaches are at the buildsite daily which is nice because they offer support to those students with any ??? they can answer for them. This year the team average GPA is 3.7. And like many others have posted if someone is struggling with grades they are not allowed to miss school to travel with the team.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

Team 708 has a minimum grade of a C in all classes. We also offer students an opportunity to receive team credit (hours calculated towards traveling) for either working on Homework, or tutoring another student on the team. There are few exceptions to this policy on our team. We also run a custom eligibility report with our criteria three times a week.

Most student's grades are never affected by the build season. We only have problems with exams and tests that fall on competition weeks ;-)

Re: FIRST and grades
 

It's an interesting point you bring up. The results, in my experience, vary based on the type of student.

Take, for example, your above average student. This student (he or she) is going to be valedictorian or salutatorian or some soft of -torian . This student has to fight to power past anything and everything. I have seen student(s) like this go sleep less nights during the season, but their grades never move an inch (especially not down).

Take, for example, your still above average student, but this student is already enlightened to the ways of FIRST. This student found out, a long time ago, that school is easy and it's simply sufficient to pay attention and do the work. For these students grades slip. They may slip from A+ to A-, or from a solid A to a B+, but they will slip. The mind can only be pulled in so many directions.

Last, but not least, take for example a FIRST student who did not his or her options. To go from days spent at the skate park to days developing a machine, it gives a student some perspective. These student often see a rise in their grades. I personally have seen such students go from shaky A/B/C to solid A+/B students with an additional increase in rigor.

FIRST does what it does, but if you choose to take grades as a metric, you must also force some perspective.

- Sunny G.

Re: FIRST and grades
 

It seems like this thread has a lot of responses from teachers and adult mentors, rather than high school students themselves.

I'm going to offer the prospective of a first year college mentor instead.


FRC in High School -
I'll be the first to admit that in high school, I really, really, really didn't care about grades because unlike most, I only saw them as a number or a letter. However, I cared deeply about learning. As such, I went to every class, on time, every day. I didn't take notes because I found it much more interesting to actually listen to what teachers had to say. I also didn't study for tests or quizzes, because I simply didn't feel like it. I always did my homework though, because as I said, I enjoyed learning. I ended high school with Honors and a 3.25 GPA. I was satisfied, because I knew I had a good grasp of everything I learned, and if I had really cared about getting a 4.0, I could have done it. As I said, I was more concerned with actually learning than just getting good grades. Because of this mentality I had, FIRST had no impact on my grades. Because I spent no time studying, FRC occupied my free time, and didn't interfere with anything else.


FRC in College -
Currently I'm finishing up my freshman year at Clarkson University. I must admit, college is very different from high school. I've found out that college level classes are difficult, and I actually have to study if I want to pass. Homework is difficult, exams are terrifying, and lectures are boring. It's not a good combination, but I'm doing just as well as I was in high school, because I've learned to adapt. However, learning how to adjust to mentoring an FRC team while learning how to adjust to college was an extreme curve for me. It was hard, but it was worth it. Of course, because of the fact that I now have to study, FRC is actually beginning to interfere with school. Regional and championship travel, coupled with long nights in the shop have strained myself and many of 229's other mentors. There are evenings where we frequently skip team meetings altogether because we have exams at the same time. It isn't easy.