[tsaksa]

The importance of parent involvement in a successful sustainable team cannot be over emphasized. Not every team will have the good fortune to be at a school that has the resources or luck to have faculty or industry support. Our own team has no teacher involvement. I do not blame the teachers at all, there is just too much for them to do these days. We also have only very limited support from local industry. If it were not for the parents, this team would probably dry up and blow away. However there is another side to parent involvement if taken from the side of the parent.

I know there can be a lot of competing demands for a parents time. Many have demanding jobs, other children to worry about, and any collection of logistical, financial, and personal issues to contend with. Add the very demanding time commitment that FIRST can be and being a parent volunteer can seem fairly overwhelming. An yet, I think parents should and often do see this not so much as a burden, but as a incredible once in a lifetime opportunity. Here is their high school age child showing an interest in something really constructive, educational, and character building. Not only that, but they need and want their parents to be involved. No mater how challenging being a parent volunteer can be they should jump at the chance. Such an opportunity will probably never come again.

My own children did not attend a high school that had a FIRST team at the time they went there, and I do not know it it would have really been something they were interested in anyway. But they did Destination Imagination and IB. They loved both programs and I think both both of them helped ignite a new level interest in academics, society, and each other. I acted as a mentor for a short time with destination Imagination, and our family did a lot to support the IB program. The opportunity to be involved in with a FIRST team, or any similar high school program is as much of a rare gift as a burden. If my own children were involved with a FIRST team where I was volunteering it would just be that much more special.

To any parents out there. Do not let this opportunity pass you by.