Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber
I've never found the One School One Team model to be better than the One Team One Community model. Would it be optimal? Possibly, I don't have anything but anecdotal data on the benefits or drawbacks of that model (and, to my knowledge there's nothing BUT anecdotal knowledge out there, if I'm wrong send me the study)
I proposed this culling partially in jest but mostly because I wanted to get folks talking about the idea of merging teams to increase sustainability, student impact, and community impact.
Let's talk about the hierarchy of needs for teams.
1. Build Robot
2. Build functional Robot
3. Build reliable Robot
4. Build elimination caliber Robot
5. Do other stuff a team should do
If two teams are both sitting at level 1, maybe combining their resources could get them to 2 or 3... which, as someone who has been at level 1 before, is substantially less sucky.
It just seems like a bad situation where we incentivize folks to grow teams but we don't really seem to care if the teams are inspiring students and communities. I've said it before but a failed team is worse than never having had a team there.
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Combining teams is
one solution for individual team sustainability problems, but not
the solution. There are certainly situations where two geographically similar teams could benefit from merging... But there are a lot more situations where the benefit simply wouldn't be there.
Every team facing sustainability issues needs to sit down and do an honest assessment of the problem. What would give them the biggest boost? For some teams, it may be financial. Others may need to find more mentors. Some are having difficulty with recruitment, or with getting kids who sign up to be able to show up.
The solution any team finds for their sustainability problem could be radically different from other teams. Maybe one team look through 20 year old yearbooks from their school, finds a successful graduate, and convinced him or her to donate. Another may increase the number of demos they do at local businesses with a tailored sales pitch for new mentors. A third may realize they need to work on changing their public image within the school, or increase awareness of the team among their peers. A fourth may need to change their meeting times to stop conflicting with something else popular at the school, or change their location so more students can get to the meetings.
And yes, some may realize that the support they can get from their student body and community isn't really enough to maintain the team, but could work out great by merging with another nearby team going through similar problems.
Any solution to sustainability issues needs to be tailored to each specific team. There is no "one size fits all" solution.
Also, I personally don't agree with your "hierarchy of needs". Every team is going to develop their own goals and desires. For some, the goal may not be to build a competitive robot... It may simply be to increase graduation rate and scholastic achievement at their school. Or their goal may be more personal, geared towards individual inspiration (winning helps, but it's not required to inspire a kid!). They may have a goal to give every student a year working in a different part of the team so they get a well rounded exposure to different fields of engineering and business. The point behind FIRST is that the competition is not the goal, it's the mechanism used to help you reach your goal. I've seen teams that have never done well on the field reach and inspire their students, and they are still going strong after doing that for 10 years.