Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
Wow... I can't imagine having that many kids on my team... It would be about 1/3 of the school!
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We're not quite THAT saturated - each of our district high schools has (according to wikipedia, because I couldn't remember) has about 1600 students, and we pull from both. I can't imagine managing 1/3 of that!
I think what works for us is that 'registering' as a team member doesn't necessarily mean that you're super active. All team members are, of course, invited to participate in all activities - and if you plan on traveling with us, there are plenty of things you MUST do - but we recognize that there are students who just want to put "yeah, I was on the robotics team" on their resume.
With the small mentor base that we have, it's just not worth our time to try and fight that. Instead, we say "Sure! You can register!" and if the student doesn't motivate themselves to get further involved, then all they did was pay $300 for a t-shirt and a line on their resume. As mentors, we will open every door for you, but you've gotta take at least one step through. We'd rather spend our time cultivating the students who sign up, show up, and work really dang hard. (Which, as I said, in our case is still around 75 students.)