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Originally Posted by JustAThought
Perhaps I am just another student, who came from a poor school, who saw something so amazing that I wanted everyone in this nation to be involved in, then I saw teams telling kids they can't join and that is what provoked it. I know my team, no matter the size, will never turn down students. We will continue to embrace them as they come and do whatever it is we must to accommodate the new demand.
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I wish I could do this, I worked with an inner city team for years and saw the impact FIRST had on those students. However, there comes a point where the ratio is simply too low (mentor:student) to ensure safety for everyone involved.
[quote=JustAThought;1169945]Removal from a team because of inactivity is one thing, however, removal because you cannot be there the entire time is a completely different matter.
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Not at all, if I have 50 students and can only accept 25 but 12 of them know they can't be there but half the meetings they should not take spots away from the ones who can dedicate the full time. I think most of this comes down to simply informing students that it is a time commitment. However, I do agree with you that it is a little extreme. Perhaps the team had problems with it in the past. Again, we don't know all the situation with the team (you probably don't either). Making decisions on partial information is a bad idea.
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Our build space can only fit, comfortably and with everyone working, 10 people. Yet, we have 30 kids. We find things for them to do. We keep them engaged. We constantly challenge them to find ways to make our team better. And the kids learn and prosper. We have very limited full time mentors, I myself am not a full time mentor. Scheduling what kids can do is important if you want to keep large amounts involved. Get kids excited about FIRST, and believe me, you hardly need to watch them. Just let them go and prosper.
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No. You need to watch them. We build FTC in a persons house. A) It is their home and I wouldn't want children wandering around my home. B) We do work with power tools (even more so in FRC) and I have always held that any student that is using a tool that has a motor in it needs to at least have an adult supervising them (even if it is just watching out of the corner of their eye) in case they get hurt.
In my case I have access to a larger site that is slightly better suited to our needs and we are working on moving there BUT I will still need to watch students very carefully (this time for legal reasons). Which still puts a limit onto the number of people that can come in. Again, it comes down to how many people the mentors feel comfortable working with.
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Originally Posted by JustAThought
I will, after this post, refrain from further comments.
I have seen through these posts that most people only wish to find reasons why to turn kids down. To me, it is sad. FIRST saved my life, if it wasn't for FIRST, I would have no future. I did not want to do this anonymously, however I did not want my views reflected as my teams views. They have no idea I posted this, nor will they ever know it was me.
My experience at FIRST has shown me the power it has on kids. If you get them involved in something they like, they will never let it go. I can see that has been forgotten. It is rather disappointing not to see more people like the leadership I had growing up in this organization. Leaders who were willing to find ways to make deals and work with the kids. We have plans for if the entire school were to join, and it would keep them all engaged.
To Chief Delphi, I bid you a fair well. I hope that one day, we will find a way to give every kid who wants to be a FIRST member to be a FIRST member and an application will only be used to show progress. Until then, I will be working with my team to continue recruiting and growing our team. No matter how large it gets, we will ALWAYS have room for them in our family.
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I don't want to turn away kids. I never claimed that and frankly I would never turn away a student that wanted to learn. There are simply certain limits that are based on hard facts. I cannot safely watch more than 15 students with the current mentor force. Furthermore I cannot ensure that each student is getting the attention that they need. If there is sufficient interest I will be attempting to approach these problems via other means. Ultimately, I can't tell them no. It's why I spend thousands of my own dollars helping teams every year. But there are certain things I can't control. Physical space... safety...money... I can influence them but frankly... there's only so much I can do. If you have ways I can scale this stuff infinitely let me know cuz I'd love to. 79 had, at the start of this season, 80 students. I'd love to see that number go to 160 and still have an even higher percentage of students participating. To have you say I don't care about students is, frankly, a huge insult and I suggest you not toss that around. None of us would be here if we didn't.