[TimCraig]

I mentor a FIRST team because I think building the robots is fascintating, I have time to do it, and I think it's never too late to have a happy childhood.

FIRST teams vary all over the map. The high school where my team is has eliminated all vocational programs. Although we're in the heart of Silicon Valley, most of the students in the club don't seem really passionate about technology. If it wasn't for my efforts, I'm afraid a robot wouldn't get built for the competition in the last 3 years the team has been in existence.

I've thought about standing back and letting the team fail to deliver a robot much less a competitive robot. It's hard to separate the student's failure from mine in this instance. When I work on something, I expect excellance. When the robot is finished, it's handed over to the students for competition and I have no control over the outcome of the competition. I've told my students the one thing I can control is the "ooh and ahh" factor when people look at our robot. I take pride in what we build no matter how it finishes in the competition.

If the students in the club learn something from being around me and how I proceed at robot building, then I'm happy but that is largely up to them. I'm not a teacher. I'm not paid to spoon feed them or keep them entertained. I'm a mentor. I'm there to show them how the real world approaches problems, attacks them, and solves them.

The first year I was involved with FIRST I tried to stand back and wait for a "student designed and built" robot with me acting as a consultant. Three weeks into the build, there was absolutely nothing to show for the effort and we were lucky that Stack Attack was a relatively simple game so we managed to field a robot that by virtue of being reliable, was competitive. The team who had sponsored us as our mentor didn't really provide much support.

FIRST teams are organizations that have great turnover. The longest a student will be on the team is 4 years. Continuity is big factor of the mentors being available to carry the knowledge forward. Ideally, this knowledge would be passed from experienced students to less experienced students. While some of that happens on my team, it's not how I see the major knowledge transfer.

PS. If any of my students read this, please tell me. While I've pushed that Chief Delphi is a valuable site, I suspect that none of you visit here regularly if at all.