[Seth Mallory]

Originally Posted by nathan_hui

So what is it that you need? My answer is this: a strong group of student leaders who can work as a team, backed by a group of very motivated and involved mentors, working with a motivated group of students. On top of that, there has to be a training pipeline for the students, a clear chance for students to rise through the ranks, and visible opportunities for the students to specialize in the team, no matter what it is they are doing. There has to be a sense of community between the team members, with the student leaders being the big brothers, the other students being the younger siblings, and the mentors being the elders.

This isn't a simple problem to fix. The environment you are in does not allow for the formation of a very good team. The maximum retention of any student is 4 years, 5 if they take a gap year and stick around. The pressure of high school and the social environment don't help any. It takes a year or two to train a student to be fully proficient, at which point they promptly get eaten up with AP/IB exams, college applications, and senioritis. It's hard to find students who understand how to lead, how to teach, how to organize, and how to drive people.

People have found solutions. Not saying that they're good, not saying that those solutions are sustainable, but there are solutions. Look at some of the teams in The New Cool. Some of the successful teams are highly sustainable, but they aren't your team. However, they are good sources of inspiration.

The main team in that book has the program integrated with the curriculum. This makes FRC the equivalent of the senior design project at many engineering universities. It is the culmination of four years of study. But this doesn't work for most schools. But there's a lesson here, which is the training pipeline. If you can start early, you have a real chance of getting people excited and involved for a very long time. So and start FTC teams in your feeder schools or in the community. Start FLL teams at the elementary schools. Reach out to the community, and get involved with the maker community for help, resources, and inspiration, and inspire the maker community as well.

The quote above is one of the best that I have read about making a long lasting team. Gunn High School had a engineering course first and then incorporated FIRST into the course. FIRST allows us to test how well our program is working. Well as defined in how much the students have learned and not how well the robot performs. The first mentor was a Eagle Scout and since then most of the main mentors have been Scoutmasters or assistant Scoutmasters. As mentors we take a hands off position with the robot. Team 192 if it was to change programs would be Troop 192 and scouts would feel at home. Because we are run like a scout troop the students lead, plan, train, like a scout troop but as a engineering business. The students know that the team will succeed or fail on their efforts and are inspired to perform higher then most would expect of high school students. This has made us the most popular program at the school and it is a rare year that we have any students drop out. Most of our students join the team for their last 2 years and only a few join in 10th grade. We had to start limiting the time the students could be on the team to increase the number of students that could join each year and learn in our program. Good luck in finding what works for you.