Quote:
Originally Posted by momter
Very discouraged by teams who believe that being the winner is the goal of the program. Especially coming from Mentors. Of course we all would love to win. That is not the core of FIRST as one speaker at the town hall mistakenly stated. It's time for teams to reevaluate the core goals of FIRST. You're sliding down the slippery slope to where athletics has landed. I have witnessed mentors explode over the results of a match. What message does that send? It breaks my heart to see this. In reality, many teams will still not qualify for the championships due to the lack of resources that are available to them. Maybe we should be more concerned about this than where we will be competing or how many trophys we can collect. In addition, I've lived near Detroit and have spent time in Detroit. It will be a fantastic venue!
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I certainly hope you didn't misconstrued my comment in the town hall as "being a winner is the goal of the program" because that was NOT my intent and also not what I said.
I said that high school age kids "want a champion". Having someone to look up to and aspire to be is a motivator for improvement. Having been abruptly cut off by the moderator, it unfortunately scrambled my thoughts along with my ability to articulate my points of view effectively. For that I will apologize as i should have been better at keeping my concentration despite this interruption.
The point I was trying to make was this: Years ago, I was inspired and motivated by Team MOE (365). They WON Chairman's. That means they were the best in the world and the champions of spreading the FIRST mission. Seeing their success was my motivator to do all I could to inspire my team through their example.
My students have learned more because of a change in mindset on our team. This mindset change came from being motivated by MOE and other champions both on and off the field. We went from "finish the robot and it's good enough" frame of mind...to a mindset of "Our job is never done till FIRST's mission is fulfilled". That means, continuous improvement on the robot- to LEARN, continuous outreach to our community to drive the first mission and continuous learning, growth and improvement. That was the point I was trying to make and had I not been cut off, maybe I could have articulated it better.