[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by xXhunter47Xx

Two weeks later, student attendance starts dropping. This was when the heavy labor started. Those who were interested in programming stopped showing up regularly, and didn't really like the idea of robotics anymore even though they haven't even started and those who were interested in building left at 4 (school gets out at 2:19 and the meetings go to 9, we allotted a 1 and a half hour time to finish homework so you do the math).

They left because they had committed several weeks to building a robot and weren't engaged at all. You said it yourself, they hadn't even started after weeks of work. I know programming can't start right away, but you need to engage people all season, especially the ones with only a minor interest. Maybe other programming challenges, like writing a scouting program, would be a good idea.

This isn't to say that they lost interest, because when the robot was almost complete attendance started rising again. They wanted to know what the robot did and how we built it, which they shouldn't even need to ask if they had shown up for the past couple meetings.

...

The worst is that the majority of the people actually showing up to every meeting and contributing will be graduating this year, leaving the fate of the team in the hands of flakes (some offense may or may not be intended).

People who aren't inspired yet are going to be flaky to some extent. There will always be a few people who are truly flaky despite your best efforts, and you just have to let them go, but most of these students are failed opportunities to inspire. These students are the ones FIRST is supposed to be about recruiting - the team exists to inspire them, not the dedicated students who are already inspired.

They're probably not contributing because they don't know how, or they have been taught but they don't have the confidence to do it themselves yet. Robotics is really intimidating, even after your first how-to-lathe or how-to-prototype lesson. This is where mentoring is extra important. You've got to engage groups of new students specifically, walking them through tasks at first, then backing off bit by bit. Before you know it, they'll be doing things on their own and contributing in ways you never could have imagined. And the true flakes, they won't stick around anyway.

You speak as if these kids owe you something - that it's a privilege for them to be there, and their obligation is to make the team better. And in many ways this is absolutely true, don't get me wrong. But really, FIRST teams exist to take these passive interests and inspire the students into working hard, becoming contributors to the team, and eventually pursuing STEM education after high school. The goal is to get them to that level, and while some students might just not want to try at all, it sounds like many aren't at that level yet and they don't really know what to do. That's why they left at the tough part - where they feel least useful - and came back for the cool part, what got them involved in the first place.

Mentoring is tough. With just 1 or 2 mentors you may not be able to give these kids the attention they each need to be inspired, and it's rough. Having the older students begin mentoring to some extent really helps - older students are more relate-able for these kids than the mentors, and you should have plenty of them.