[waialua359]

I'm going to share my PM to the OP but with more detail.

Honestly, I dont personally view it as a black and white issue here. I think the pursuit of winning positively impacts lives and drives students to be better.
I never ever kid my students. Life is full of competitions for jobs, good grades vs your peers, and other pursuits in life. Tell it like it is.

FIRST makes it easy for our own personal selfish goals. To create a platform where I can inspire kids who like STEM, where we dont have to reinvent the wheel or create our own projects/programs to achieve this.

We have lots of data on current and former students who have gone through our program for all 16 years. It doesnt necessarily mean that keeping track/celebrating our successes keeps us from focusing on our overall goals/objectives.
In our community, we lose in all sports and never get any recognition vs. all of the private and Honolulu schools. Experiencing success in FIRST competitions provides our kids a sense of pride and happiness that they hardly ever get. Of the 35 students in our program, only 8 of them live with both parents. The rest come from either broken homes, single parents, live in with guardians, grandparents, or in some extreme cases this year neglection from parents who sometimes never see their child for days at a time.

-Glenn