Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Hibner
High school sports is a great example. Every state has teams that are elite year after year in a given sport (around here Farmington Hills Harrison football is a great example). Are their students inherently superior in football every year? No - it's the coaches that are the common factor (like the mentors in FIRST).
Do we now make the leap that the coaches must be donning masks to look like teenagers and play quarterback and running back? It's pretty obvious that they aren't doing that. The job of the coaches is to have a winning SYSTEM, and a METHOD to teach and apply the system.
If adults instill consistently elite programs with high school kids playing football, why can't the same be done in robotics?
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To take this a step further, once mentors or coaches have instilled a system that creates excellence, more students want to be a part of that system. I know the original point of your post was to point out that powerhouse teams do not have superior students, but I think to an extent the better teams in FIRST can have students who are more motivated and interested in pursuing the engineering challenges it presents. If you look at elite sports programs in an area, once that program has sustained success, students will choose that school over another or will try out for that sport when they wouldn't have taken an interest before just because they know of its success. A FIRST team could be similar; successful teams are more likely to attract students who are undecided about the extracurricular activities they should pursue, and a student who has a strong engineering interest and the option of choosing between two schools with FIRST teams may be inclined to go to the school with the more successful team.
Note that I don't define success in terms of winning, since FIRST has many definitions of success as has been discussed at length.
Now about my team specifically, we are a team that is both student and mentor built. While there are times when the mentors are teaching students (especially those new to the program), often students and mentors work as equals on the team. Design discussions involve suggestions from both students and mentors, and build consists of students building part of an arm while a mentor takes another part of the arm to be welded (since there are no welding facilities at the school). There have been years where certain subteams are more student or mentor built depending on resources but the average is still that they are on equal ground.
If a team were to see us at competition, it would be easy to mistake us as an entirely mentor built team, even though that's far from the truth. For example at this year's regional, we had 7 mentors, 3 teachers/chaperones, and 10 students, though the numbers varied by day. Of the students on the team only 3 were usually in the pit, since 3 were on the drive team and the other 4 were distributing buttons, watching matches, etc. If you came by our pit at the wrong time you might see 3 mentors on the robot and no students (or mistake some of our students for mentors), and think "wow, the students don't do any work on that team". In reality the drive team was off discussing strategy for the next match and the students in the pit were quickly eating lunch, but if that's the only time you see our pit the wrong impression will stick with you.
So please teams, don't assume students aren't learning because you saw "only mentors" in the pits with the robot, or somehow "know" that mentors built their robot. You likely have just seen a team at the wrong time, and it's hard to shake first impressions.
Interestingly, our team has always had close to a 1:1 ratio between mentors and students because of the low number of students we usually have and the high number of mentors who like to get involved. And while we've always fielded robots that are at least mildly competitive, we have never won a regional competition and have only been finalists once in 11 years. Heck, this year was only the third time we've finished in the top 8 at an event. So I have to question the notion that a mentor heavy team will dominate other FIRST teams, because that has never been our experience.