[wevets]

Don et al,

Yes, you have changed my thinking on this, but not much. I see where you're coming from and I acknowledge that others will see this differently than I do. Of course I can't argue with including an adult on the drive team when the whole team is 3 kids and an adult as was cited by Mr V in this thread. But that's the degenerate case and not common.

And it's quite clear that the rules allow for adult coaches on the drive team.

But I'll jump back to the sports analogy introduced by Donut: The coach may not be the quarterback even though the coach may call the plays from the side. The quarterback tells the team what the play is even though he may be green and scared. The coach will do his best to teach the quarterback before the game, but he won't go out on the field. Coaching is limited to what goes on between actual plays. The play is owned by the team.

I've read his post above this one a couple of times and I completely agree with PiKman. His "best situation" is, I think, truly best.

But I want to cite an experience I had with the senior coach of our team. I had been getting, shall we say, too involved with how we were programming autonomous. The coach and I discussed my behavior and he observed: "You are not willing to let the kids fail. I am." He was right. When the kids fully own the decisions, they fully own the victory. When the adults make many of the decisions and the team wins, the kids are on the winning team, but they don't fully own the victory. There's a difference. There's a lot of judgement here - kids can't be allowed to make harmful, dangerous or immoral decisions and they often need to be guided to pursue a decision to full closure or be made aware of alternatives. Providing and training judgement is one of our primary coaching responsibilities.

On the flip side, when the kids don't win, the common case, they should own that, too. Handling that with gracious professionalism, getting up and trying again, maybe realizing that they have a few things yet to learn and that their mentors are there to help them but not do it for them, is a very valuable experience. Helping the kids through this is a coaching job.

I've had this discussion with a few of our senior students. They don't like competing against adults on other teams. They think its unfair when they see adults on other drive teams and when, for instance, they see adults rushing in, even pushing students out of the way, to repair a robot damaged in competition.

I believe that we mentors should provide guidance and we should create an environment where the kids can learn to provide the leadership and ownership of the team and its results. They're capable if we let them.