[Jon Stratis]

Without trying to address each question individually, the general theme here is attendance - how do you get people to show up?

It's important to figure out why people stop showing up - maybe they got burned out, or maybe they're involved with another winter activity that conflicts, or maybe they have a problem getting a ride to the meetings, or maybe they don't think they can handle their homework alongside meetings every day. Whatever it is, you can only address the problem after you know the reason.

In general, though...

Try increasing teambuilding and "fun" activities that aren't as serious or stressful as building the robot. The more the team feels like a close-knit family, the less likely people are going to want to leave. The more people Associate robotics meetings with "fun", the less likely they are to leave. For example, our fall meetings all have a 30 minute "snack time" in the middle - it's a chance to unwind, socialize, and gobble down some cookies or chips. At the start of each fall meeting we do some sort of team building exercise that has nothing to do with the robot - not only does it help everyone get to know each other, but it can often help to absorb some of the chatty energy that can distract people after a long School day.

Look at travel to/from meetings, and try to organize both a carpool system and a homework club. I know students on our team have carpooled every year, especially when we were building away from the school. Now that we're at the school, there's a fairly large group that sticks around after school and helps each other with their homework before the meetings start (and once mentors can get there, they have another resource for help if they're stuck on something!). The homework part can especially help - many parents would have a problem with their kid getting home late every evening saying "i spent the afternoon playing with robots, now I need to stay up late and do all my homework!" - it's much better if they can get home with all the homework done and relax a bit with the family, parents will like that a lot more!

Foster an atmosphere of acceptance- make sure everyone is included equally at the meetings, regardless if they show up once a week or every night. Even if people can't be there every meeting, you want them to feel welcome, useful, and part of the team. Sure, you'll have a small core that never missed a meeting, but those people are the ones who hold it together and enable everyone else to miss a few here or there. Plus, this is about inspiration, and you might just inspire that kid who shows up once a week by including him, and you might discourage him if you can't find anything worthwhile or fun for him to do when he does show up.

Finally, we do include incentives in our lettering requirements. Straight off the bat, there's a requirement for attendance- if you want to letter, you need to be at 80% of all the initially scheduled meetings for the build season (if we add meetings to the end of the season because we're behind, they are not considered "required"). We also ask each student to put together a small portfolio showing what they accomplished for the year and how they grew within the program (we stress that they shouldn't sped a lot of time on it - we aren't looking for something sparkly and pretty, just a record of what they did so we can be sure they didn't just sit around chatting).