Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

With 6 pages of comments, if we kept strictly to the OP's question, we would be close to beating a dead horse. :deadhorse: :) Anyway back to the OP's question which is what to do about hearsay information about non team behavior and not what the students are doing while on a team activity...

Keeping in mind that my team's school has a 24/7 rules policy and students are largely guilty until proven innocent: I would need verifiable facts before reporting. Even then I would keep in mind that once reported they would be kicked off the team & college admissions might be effected. With the current zero tolerance for drug use, the criminal penalties might likely outweigh the damage of recreational drug use. Damaging behaviors like violence & large scale dealing are a different issue.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

I'm not so sure I would either, nor am I sure that that is the best course of action. Reporting to someone who is simply going to get the student in trouble is not always the way to go. Sometimes it is better to approach them personally and handle it without going to the higher-ups if you can. Once again, compassion and being relatable/personable are always going to accomplish way more than sticking a kid in detention. Obviously if you have mandatory reporting rules this cannot be the case, please use discretion.

For those of you (not necessarily techhelpbb, who I quoted here) that say leave parenting to parents, you have to recognize that many kids don't have role-model parents or any parents for that matter. So, often times they lack any discipline or guidance at home. As mentors (a title I hope to one day earn) we have an obligation to help students who look up to us. I know my mentors have been among the most impactful people in our lives, and to suggest mentors do not have a role to play in this issue is wrong. Great mentors teach more than great STEM skills, they teach life skills and help students wherever they can in times of need.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

I completely agree with this.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

Agree with verifiable facts, no rumors or hearsay, but the ramifications are not up to FIRST mentors. For better or worse there are elected school boards, trained teachers, administrators, counselors and hopefully parents. Most FIRST mentors have no special knowledge in this area, please let parents and professionals handle it. FIRST mentors can't be in the business of weighing penalties versus damage from the drugs. Imagine the day when a grieving parent comes to a mentor and says "but you knew".

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

I applaud your concern and empathy for kids with no functioning parents at home. There are many great programs for you to help reach such students. People who volunteer in such programs are truly special! All those programs involve professional counselor-types to help you help the student.

But no such infrastructure exists in FIRST. We can be generally supportive but FIRST mentors are technical mentors and coaches. We do not have the complete picture. It is better, for the student, to let professionals at school or other agencies help troubled students.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

The OP included alcohol and the Hooters incident featured alcohol. And mentors who make poor choices tend to make them in multiple areas.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

A mentor drinking one legal drink at dinner in a responsible manner is hardly a "poor choice". It's also not against any of FIRST's YPP rules.

I agree with most of your points that most mentors are not properly equipped to make decisions about a student's responsible drug use, but let's not dramaticize responsible use- that only serves to demonize all use of alcohol instead of just discouraging poor use, causing students to not know the difference.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

The poor choice was Hooters and driving after drinking (which Monchron says did not happen). All I'm saying is poor choices are not isolated incidents.

Though YPP allows it, does the student learn that "my mentor drinks responsibly" or simply "my mentor drinks". Who knows? Students process things in all kinds of crazy ways, some rational and some not. I respect your opinion. Personally I do not EVER drink in front of the students. It seems the safer road to travel. Some school districts take this seriously - our teachers are strongly discouraged from going to establishments in the county that serve alcohol without meals (so no bars, dance clubs etc).

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

I hear you and many/most people responsibly use alcohol. But not that does not include everybody. I was a bartender for 7-8 years. I had many customers who were responsible drinkers. But I had some who, after drinking a couple, could not stop (alcoholic or not). Alcoholism is a disease and, according to the NIH, is nearly 50% genetic. How do we explain that to a FIRST student? I'm not looking to demonize anything or anybody just advocating that we let professionals do their job.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

I make poor choices. You make poor choices. EVERY mentor makes poor choices.
I could just be misunderstanding but it really sounds like you are trying to demonize someone for making that poor choice. Kind of a one-strike and you're out situation. People will usually make many poor choices in their lives (so you are right) and those poor choices are great opportunities to become a better person from. The same goes for making mistakes while building a robot and then having to iterate to fix it. The second poor choice though, is something that you completely fabricated.

And an even better lesson for a student than making a mistake themselves is to see someone they respect make a mistake, correct their behavior, and move on a better person for it.


I know. It is the former. I learned "my mentor drinks responsibly". Other people might take something else away from the experience, but I think it ridiculous to try to hide very normal and socially acceptable things that we do from students. Like what Kevin said about dramatizing alcohol use, we should not act like drinking is a taboo. In the US we have a real problem with teenagers treating alcohol like it is a party drug. "My mentor drinks" is not a bad lesson at all, it is a neutral lesson. There are many way to have a negative relationship with alcohol and refusing to acknowledge it or treating it like a taboo is one of them.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

"My mentor drinks" can be a bad lesson... It all depends on the individuals involved. Is it worth potentially delivering or reinforcing a bad lesson to an impressionable student, when it's a situation that is so easy to avoid?

You don't have to treat alcohol like a taboo or avoid it completely for half the year because it's the build/competition season... But it just makes so much sense to separate the two. I don't drink around students, I don't show up to meetings under the influence of anything. When I do partake, I do so in appropriate circumstances... And frankly, it's not appropriate to be exposing underaged kids to it without first Consulting the parents.

Think about the kids you mentor, and their parents. What do you think the parents would say if you went up and said "when we're travelling for this competition, the other mentors and I plan to take the kids to eat at this bar I like, and we wanted to make sure it was ok with you if the adults drank while we were there.". I can almost guarantee that there will be at least one set of parents on every team that would not be ok with it.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

I don't.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

Hhm, I'm interested to see more discussion about this. To be honest, I don't see how that could be a bad lesson, but I understand that there are all types of people and I am eager to be shown another point of view. I can understand that knowledge that a mentor drinks may make a student uncomfortable but I also think that can be a good lesson too. In particular, seeing that that mentor is still the same person you respect even if he/she occasionally ingests alcohol.

That is certainly an interesting point. We do have a couple of parents with specific rules and instructions for their student. For instance, one of our students can't be near the robot if it is powered on and able to move any parts of itself (as in, driving the robot is forbidden). Even though driving it might be a powerfully positive experience for him, we are obviously going to abide by his parents' wishes. It is a tough one for me because I genuinely believe that showing a student responsible drinking can be a powerfully positive experience.
And just to be clear, yes parental wishes or school rules come first in ALL of these situations.

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

You are wildly misunderstanding. The point is why even go down this road. If you don't drink around the students, there is no issue. I am not demonizing anyone but the reality is that it may be a one-strike and you are out scenario, not because I think that best but because of zero-tolerance school regulations. Plus there are the wishes of the parents to consider.

I commend you for processing the situation reasonably but not all students will take it they way you did. Who decides what constitutes "very normal and socially acceptable things"? I suspect you and I would be in near total agreement. But many student's parents might not agree with us and the school administration is likely to not agree (being crazy risk averse).

Re: Drugs and Alcohol - Dirty Little Secrets
 

Apologies, this is way off topic. The parent knows the driver is behind a wall, correct?