[waialua359]

Originally Posted by FrankJ

First of all, my team is fortunate to be able to follow your advice. Our lead mentor (or coach) is a teacher, and we have strong support in school because of that. But not all teams are so fortunate. Having a deep base of mentors is important so the teacher (or one person) is not forced to do everything. In my limited experience I have seen several teams fail because the teacher gets burned out and no other teacher want to take on the work.

As the lead teacher of our program, I am also a mentor as well. During several years early on, I was both the lead teacher and build mentor on our team. Getting burnt out was an understatement, but luckily for me I had an understanding wife (still do) and no kids yet at the time.
Our program is so much more successful because the focus shifted on getting specialty volunteer mentors and we have the right mix and depth in the areas that we need.
However, if and when I decide to either leave or retire, the school would be hard pressed to find another person. This isnt because I think I'm the best or that no one else could possibly do it, but because the school would not be willing to allocate any more resources than 1 person to lead our program in such a small school with limited resources.
I think like anything we do in life, the reality is that no matter how much we try to systemize any program, the success is highly dependent on who the leaders are. We have all seen great FRC programs that lose some of their successes because they lose key people or key volunteers......but yet, we will still try and diversify any key area of a program.