Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

Most schools have policies governing grades and extra-curricular activities. Our school is a 2.0 min GPA and no F for both athletics and extra-curricular stuff like band and robotics.

But be careful as Jherbie53 metnioned about excluding students. If your team is made up of all 4.0 students, great, but if they were 4.0 students before FIRST, then I think you're missing an opportunity to bring in a more diverse population of students that can greatly benefit from what FIRST has to offer. Can grades slip during a FIRST season, yep; can we take steps to minimize, sure. But in the end of a year, the general trend is that grades tend to go up for students in FIRST. A study has already shown this.

There are a lot of middle of the road, 2.5-3.5 GPA, students out there that can really benefit from FIRST that I feel get overlooked too often. As a coach, I often try to recruit those really sharp students, but I too have to remind myself to also look for those other students with the skills to do well in our program. I hope we all look to have more of those students on our teams.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

That is a perfect statement! For me, its not the kids that come in wanting to do engineering and learn more about engineering that I call my success stories... its the kids that come in with the low GPAs, or zero interest in robots (maybe they came because their friends joined, or they wanted to travel or even because they just didnt want to go home), and came out with decent GPAs and an interest in engineering or something technical that are the true successes of this program!

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

I suppose I fit in with that description. When I joined my team I had a very low GPA (around a 2.1) and had absolutely no interest in robots or engineering, but I was already heavily interested computer science. I didn't join because of friends joining (actually I didn't know anyone from the team) and I didn't even know about the traveling, but I joined because my computer programming and physics teachers both recommended that I do so. I eventually gave in and joined, although I wasn't very enthusiastic about the whole thing. This year I have had a GPA of 3.888 (my highest ever) and I have gained an interest in embedded systems programming. I am also considering making my minor be in electrical engineering (my major will be computer science).

This is only my opinion, but I really think that a student's GPA has no relevance to showing how much a student can get out of FIRST, nor can it show how much dedication and/or effort a student is willing to put in.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

Amen. Hallelujah. Whenever I read things like "everyone on our team has to be an honors student" I want to throw something.

For
Inspiration and
Recognition of
Science and
Technology

You'll note that FIRST's slogan does not include "for those students who are so self-motivated that they don't really need a program like this anyway." If we don't use our program to motivate kids who are struggling to find some reason to care about school, what's the point? Setting high grades standards to participate is EXACTLY the wrong policy to enforce. You are automatically excluding those whose lives could be the most transformed by the experience.

I just want to add that there is a positive correlation between intelligence and grades, but it is far from a strong one. You can get good grades by working hard, but "smart" is mostly born. Bored smart kids are so common in school that it is practically a cliche. Excluding those without good grades does not even insure that you are getting the school's best and brightest on your team.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

I totally agree. Half of the responses in this thread make me sick.

I also agree with your points about lack of motivation. I was at the top of my class until school stopped being fun. I like solving problems. I don't like memorizing things just to get high scores on the exam, without really learning anything. Yet, it just so happens a majority of students need to learn this way, so that is how the material is taught. Without FIRST I probably would have dropped out of school by now.

(Then again, this is coming from someone who tries to "solve" questions in English class mathematically...)

Re: I feel this needs to be said...
 

FIRST was meant to promote peer and mentor inspiration, not exclusion. Many students not on the honor roll may be sticking with high school just because of the challege FIRST offers them. Sticking to a high school's athletic requirements are one thing, but treating the joining of a team like a job interview or college application is another.

My team requires no less than a C in Math and Science, and it is checked once a year: when a student joins the team. Rarely do grades become a problem. Many of us actually balance FIRST with part-time jobs, challenging courses, and other extracurriculars. Some people can handle it, some people can't. It's a personal decision that must be made solely by the person in question. If a college student feels they can handle the work load of their courses and mentor a FIRST team, they should. If they feel they can't, they shouldn't. There should be no issue as to whether college students in general have the ability to mentor.

Education is important, but for some, FIRST is their education.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

I couldn't agree more.

Wow, so I'm not the only one. My English teacher must have thought I was crazy when I tried to find patterns and mathematically arrive at the answers to the exercises in our vocabulary books when I got bored.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

Our team has an open door policy. You are welcome if you do the work. Sometimes it takes half the year for the team member to understand what that means. I've worked with the team for several years and have never seen a team member turned away. It's important for the mentors to help the process and it's important for the team members to accept this policy and welcome new members each year. A new team member learns so much the first year that when they return the 2nd year, they have changed in so many ways, it almost seems like they are a different person. If you have all one type of person your team can't expand in the areas it needs to.

(You can apply math to Shakespeare. Poe works but he can be depressing)
Jane

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

I've got to stick up for Rick and Tom, here.

To me, anyway, one of the most interesting parts of working within a FIRST team is seeing how the students progress through it, over the years. Though it may sound like I'm using the students in some grand social experiment, the point is that they are progressing. In fact, I might go so far as to say that I'm most impressed with the ones who go from mediocrity to playing a vital role on the team, in just a few years.

If there is a minimum standard that students need to meet, every single one of those students is excluded, at least until their grades improve. But that's the thing—as often as not, their grades won't improve, because they're unmotivated and uninterested by their education. FIRST is a great tool for motivating and captivating—but it's only useful to those who are allowed to participate.

The GPA requirements smells like an arbitrary standard that is fundamentally flawed in the way that it assesses the needs of the team, and the goals of education in general. Schools don't (or, at any rate, shouldn't) exist to churn out students with high GPAs—by all rights, that's a side effect, not a goal. They ought to be attempting to produce educated, capable individuals, and high marks or not, FIRST helps this immensely. Similarly, these sorts of people are exactly what a team needs—it doesn't help the team much to have someone with a 4.0 GPA if they can't wire a robot, or scout and strategize, or learn how to do one of these things. Teams, like real life, function because people have the skills to make things work; their GPAs in and of themselves are not sufficient predictors of the skills that they possess.

As a matter of fact, I'll go out on a limb and opine that if there's one worst thing that a team can do, it's preventing students from going to competitions, because of their marks. It seems foolish, to me, to expect that by leaving them at school for the three days that they would miss, they will somehow take the opportunity to correct whatever caused their low marks. When you think about it, it means that a left-behind student has to accept the fact that they're not being permitted to go, not because of their actions as a member of the team, but because of something unrelated—it's like being kept from playing baseball because you didn't practice the piano—it's got real potential for making them resentful. That's not going to help the team, the student's marks, or the excluded student. And if it's not helping, why do it? Because of the perverse (but pervasive) belief that by punishing an individual (and especially a teenager), they will come to accept and live up to your expectations? That is truly outrageous, and flagrantly ignores the natural tendency to learn better when having fun, than when being punished.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

I consider going to competitions a reward. Letting a student travel with the team only when they've earned the privilege is conceptually different from punishing them when their grades don't meet the standard. The overt result is the same, but the underlying reasoning isn't the same as yours. Carrots don't make people resentful the way sticks do.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

I would have agreed with you several years ago, but over the years there have been students who were not allowed to travel with the team because of low grades, or attendance issues

and you are right, they may not go back and fix their grade problem the next week, but students who went through this have come back a year or two later and said that this was the best thing that ever happened to them.

In the real world there are concequences for your actions. You dont follow the rules, you dont keep up your end of the deal, and you will suffer for it - lost jobs, lost relationships, flunking out of college, lost opportunities...

The rules should be spelled out clearly: if your grades fall below a set level (for any reason) you cannot travel with the team. If you fail any courses you are off the team for the rest of the year. And then the rules should be enforced.

What good is it to teach students the laws of physics, engineering principles, science and technology, but not to teach them the equally fixed laws of personal responsibility and cause/effect relationships?

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

You know, I'd like to point something out. High School is a great time in life but it is also an opportune time to test your limits and see what you are capable of handling before it counts "for good" in College.

I'm going to tell you my story. Please only see these statistics as information to prove a point.
A little background:
- 14 APs, 3.9 gpa (unweighted)/5.17 (weighted), 7 classes a yr, 9 addl taken
- 1 job over summer (40 hour weeks)
- actively on FIRST for 2 years, not as active 1 year
- v tennis 3 yrs, env sci comp 2 yrs, v swimming 1 sem, tae kwon do 2 yrs
- tutoring 2 yrs, volunteering @ hospital 1 yr, many speeches/presentations
- SAT score: 1450 (old), 2150 (new)/SAT2s: Math (800) Physics (800) Chemistry (790) -- I studied for EVERY SINGLE ONE (20+ hrs each)
- 300ish recorded hours of community service

No, I'm not perfect and this isn't the usual stats list but I feel that school is very important and should be taken very seriously in life. I have taken it seriously.

I have also taken FIRST seriously. Ask those who know me, I have tried every job possible. My philosophy is, if I dedicate myself to an activity, I do it wholeheartedly. I think anyone on my team (and those who know me personally) can vouch for that.

What's my point?
...you can do whatever you set your mind to. no doubt. But whatever you take on, you have to adjust your schedule accordingly. You cannot cut corners. I know, I know, school might be boring, stupid, or deemed as unnecessary. So? It's not WHAT you take but how you take it. I took my classes for getting a background, never studying specifically for tests but for knowing content and it worked pretty well for me. Even if I hated english, i looked at it to improve my writing. You can learn from everything.

I'd strongly encourage you to set your priorities now and stick to them. School is #1. You can do all of this and come out alive if you PLAN and make sacrifices. I didn't go out during FIRST season, there were times where I refused plans... you deal.

When you look back what are you going to remember? I will remember having fun, working hard, doing well.
Everyone wants to do that. It is up to you to set your schedule accordingly. To complete my schedule I had to have strict discipline. DEVELOP this. It will come in handy.

If anyone has any personal comments, please PM me personally. If you need help, let me know, this is what I'm here for. I love helping others, just give me a chance.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

This thread has gotten more replies than I expected.

Since this thread is getting off topic and heated and I don’t want to see a fight, I’m asking it be closed off so everyone can cool off, and possibly reopened for discussion later if seen fit by those in charge.

Thank you.

Re: I feel this needs to be said...(Grades & FIRST Dedication)
 

I concur. Done - breathe in, breathe out, and we'll see you in a few.
-JAB