I love the somewhere in the middle theory. Does it happen? Not likely.
This is my second year on a veteran team. We have 1 mentor that has been around for ever. The rest of us are either new or alumni. We started out designing trying to get student input. They just sat there with 1 or 2 suggestions during the whole process. We then started build. This time 1 or 2 sets of hands joined in. We progressed very slowly to the point of can we finish on time. At this point 2 mentors and 1 grade 9 student worked to completion. I was discouraged to say the least. Two students did work with 2 mentors and did all of the programming. By what I hear the students did more programming than the mentors with the mentors assisting when necessary. This was really encouraging.
Along comes ship and now competitions. The robot has problems and things break. I am not around and wonder what's happening. I get to the pits to see no mentor working on the bot, just students. At Championship I am asked to go to the pits when I have finished announcing at lunch time. I am told that a pulley system I built had been damaged and needed repair. When I arrived I find that the students have fixed 85 % of problem and I had little to do.
Now comes my point. Allthe while we were building I was explaining what we were doing and why. The students stood back and watched alot. When it came down to crunch in the pits, the students rose to the challenge, used what they learned and made me beam like a proud father. At the end of build we wanted to call the robot "Mentorbot". The students however showed that what they learned they could put into practice and the robot became theirs. even though we will lose some kids next year, I am looking forward to more student participation. If it doesn't happen and we have to finish like we did this year I will know that if we continue to explain and show, they will learn. That's what I believe FIRST is about.
If and when any of our students read this, I will deny saying nice about you and will claim that 1 of you logged on with my password and wrote this.
Signed , Proud Mentor
