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Re: Why FIRST is different
I think that many teams who profess to be 100% student-lead teams are really working in partnership with their mentors and don't realize it. In my opinion, the mentors need to step up and help the students (and parents) understand the value of accepting the partnership, developing it, and promoting it.
Student-lead teams often have mentors who enjoy mentoring, and mentoring can often become subtle, seamless, inconspicuous. That is when students begin to think that they are doing it all themselves, when actually, that is far from the truth.
There needs to be time taken within the team to develop the understanding of how the team runs itself and why. Partnership is a word that needs to be used, explained, and promoted within the team as well as outside the team. It isn't just the students who get locked into the student-run/student-lead concept - so do their parents who may help the team with fundraising, outreach, writing grants, and travel planning. If the parents understand the team to be student-run, when in fact, it is a partnership - then a team can really run into thick walls of miscommunication - especially when promoting the team for the multiple reasons and purposes that teams need to.
Jane
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Excellence is contagious. ~ Andy Baker, President, AndyMark, Inc. and Woodie Flowers Award 2003
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
~ Helen Keller (1880-1968)
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