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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
if your team has a high retention rate, and the same students come back every year, and they are able to do 99% of the design and build work - thats outstanding - I commend you for that accomplishment
and by the same token, if your team has 100% new students every year, and the engineers and mentors have to spoon feed you for the first week or two, but you end up with a great machine in the end, thats super too.
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That's probably the best I've heard it said. I'll agree with that wholeheartedly.
I think the problem that some people have is that on a few teams, the engineers don't even care about the kids -- they just want to play the game for themselves. They'll treat the high schoolers with a very condescending attitude, and the outcome is that the kids become discouraged instead of encouraged to pursue a field in engineering.
I don't claim to have a magic solution to this problem, but I do think it is a problem.
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Originally Posted by KenWittlief
so I guess our team is in the middle - the mentors dont do all the work, and the students dont either - and when a crisis arises in the pits we are all there working together
thats our teams vision of FIRST - we dont build the best machines every year
but we do have two regional trophies sitting on a shelf, and a finalist trophy from this year (so far) - so we aint doing so bad either.
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I think you hit the nail on the head again -- FIRST isn't about building the best machines ... it's about building machines period.
Just as long as the students feel like they matter and are involved ... FIRST will serve for their benefit.