[EricH]

Originally Posted by zizia

Hi, I'm not a mentor, I'm just a team member but my team (2996) have had a similar problem in that we had too many new and inexperienced members and not enough for them to. We created an FTC team that served as a JV team to our Varsity. If students needed to learn new skills or couldn't make the time commitment they were recommended to join the FTC team instead of the FRC. This way we still managed to keep our students busy, and maintain a steady new member flow to both teams. I don't know if this is feasible for you guys, because you said that you had a tiny shop, but maybe you could organize different time schedules?

As a note, the OP is in Israel. FIRST at this time has no FTC teams or events listed in Israel. VRC also has nothing listed in that country.

For the OP:
I see a couple of methods. One, as already noted, is to increase the number of mentors (and/or the size of the build space, which may require a completely new build space).

Another method I can see working is to raise the lower age limit by one grade. Something like this (using the American grade system here): If your team is currently grades 9-12, make it grades 10-12. If you think you can have a few more after that cut, add in grade 9 on a "intern" basis--that is, they have more restrictions on when they can be there (parents with them?), or maybe they have to have FLL experience to join. That way, you only have to screen one grade instead of all of them.

And another method... Offseason Training. If you can get more students trained on the equipment, you can limit the number of students in the shop on any given night and still have a fully-functional crew there. This allows more rest/homework, and possibly whoever isn't in the shop meets up elsewhere, finding more space for the team to use.