Quote:
Originally Posted by jrw
Why not? If you join a football team there are certain expectations about your commitment - you don't get to skip every training session and expect to play in the grand final.
Everyone has to make decisions about what is important to them - and joining a robotics team means it has to be important enough for you to meet the expectations that the team has of its members (whatever they might be) - and this might mean it needs to be important enough for you to make sacrifices elsewhere. IMHO one of the foundations of a team is that team members need to be able to rely on one another to actually turn up so that work can be done. Turning up every now and then when you don't have a better offer is unfair to everyone else (and pretty rude if you ask me). "I'll come and hang out with you guys if I can't find something better to do..."
Why should mentors give up their time to help young people who might not even turn up?
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If you want to create a strong, diverse team - learn to work with and around the kids, their schedules, and other activities. If you want to compete against football, basketball, wrestling, hockey, gymnastics for team members, good luck.
FRC 4607 wants the best kids in the school. When we started the program in 2013, all of the 24 students were involved in other activities I believe of the 50 we have now, all but 5 are in other activities). We have created a balance at Becker where we have set times that we expect all team members to attend (Large Group Meetings). Then each squad lays out when and how long they meet during the other 4 days of the week. Saturday build days are expected that students are here (some have conflicts that we work around).
Just my two cents...