[RRLedford]

Yes, it is a mistake to focus mostly on the extremes, since there is really a full spectrum of different ways that the mentor-student responsibilities ultimately end up being defined, allocated, and carried out, in the process of completing a First Robotics season.

When participants (students, teachers or mentors) become upset, within this process, it will nearly always relate in some way to unfulfilled expectations, thwarted intentions, or undelivered communications (and/or combinations of all three).

As head mentor for nearly 6 years at a K-12 school that does both the FTC and and FRC programs, and launched our 2nd FTC team this year, I have seen the full range of how these upsets develop and play out.

The collection of intentions and expectations that student participants bring with them to the program varies considerably, and these are most often never really clearly communicated at the start of a season. Many times, as these student intentions and expectations start being seen (by them) as thwarted or at risk, the mentor(s') roll(s) will start to be examined and questioned.

For example, in this FTC season the sophomore team member majorities of both our FTC teams decided they would learn best if mentor involvement was kept at an absolute minimum - as in => "we'll call you when we need you."
For them, in their opinion, the mentors had become an impediment to their robotics learning process.

They indicated they would rather make their own decisions and choices, even if they proved to be wrong and their robots failed to perform as expected.

Needless to say, such an approach did not really turn out so well, and other more veteran team members considered it absurd, especially when the time window pressures for meeting robot build deadlines made this more trial & error approach (ending up heavy on the errors count) an extremely unworkable one.

The mentor group was also not so pleased to hear that their mentoring efforts could be assessed with such a negative view, by this many students, However, in the end the middle ground between the extremes of viewpoints was eventually found.

Still, it had to be acknowledged by the team mentors that, the mere success of getting a decent performing and, competition ready robot on the field, if that effort required too much hands on mentor involvement, then such an approach was not necessarily the kind of result with which all student team members would consider an equally satisfying for them way to run the program.

-Dick Ledford