Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill_B
And the way to motivate your team members to do this is ? ? ? ? ?
How can we cure the feeling that if I'm not already good at it, further effort is not going to help?
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If anyone in the entire world has answers to these questions. PLEASE TELL ME! As a math teacher who constantly faces these challenges every single day, I completely understand where this is coming from.
My response is that sometimes it's up to the mentor to provide that motivation. Teaching someone how to wire a PD is not any different to me as teaching someone to keep going even when the going gets tough or it seems all hope is lost. That's part of what we're doing. Tell them it's going to be hard. Be there sitting next to them while they work on the essay or executive summary or presentation. Talk through problems with them. Show them winning Chairman's Essays (then they don't have to physically move because that's hard for teenagers sometimes). Show them videos. Simbotics's video from last year constantly inspires me and my team.
/Awkward segue to the real question/ Our team submitted Chairman's Award for the first time this year. It was so hard. But so was the first time we built a robot 2 years ago!!! If it was easy, every single team in the whole world would submit it. But it's not and the lesson of never giving up is extremely powerful. Sure, the first time you submit it might not be the best but a team's first robot also is often not the best robot they produce. Learning and growing and improving, that's what FIRST is about.
To piggy back on a lot of other wonderful answers. Chairman's provided us an opportunity to really nail down the things that we are really strong with and help us focus on the things we need to work on. We just finished our 1 Regional of the year yesterday and already have 4 goals for next season lined up. Also, it helped push us to be more of a full year team. We do outreach throughout the spring and fall. We plan to do parades this summer.
Finally, Chairman's Award connected us with teams and people that we never would have connected with otherwise. FRC Team 2220 from Eagan, MN also submitted Chairman's this year and we worked closely with them throughout the process. Our team now considers them genuine friends. It also connected us with Renee Becker, the wonderful MN FIRST Senior Mentor. Through her we met tons of other teams. It's like a tree. From that Chairman's root, our connections and outreach and goals and team pride and focus have all grown.
So to answer the question "Why even bother submitting a Chairman's Award if we're not gonna win?", my response would be another question "Why even bother building a robot if we're not gonna win?". The answer to both? To learn and grow.