Thread: Team Governance
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Unread 18-04-2006, 14:24
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dhitchco dhitchco is offline
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AKA: Doug Hitchcock
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Re: Team Governance

Paul,

First, your survey is a bit of "apples and oranges" in that the questions sometimes can be "additive"....But that's OK, it gets the issue and question on the table.

Congrats on winning the rookie all-star award; some thoughts:
a) check out the NEMO organization and their topics on "mentor burn-out" and "student burn-out". Subjects you'll want to closely watch in future years.
b) develop a team structure centered around the TASKS, not the PEOPLE. Set-up sub-teams with task lists and let people choose the tasks they want to work on during build season as well as year-round. Be sure that everyone works on a sub-team and that no student works on more than 2-3 subteams. Also, be sure that both male and female students don't get pigeon-holed into subteams (e.g. girls on spirit, boys on drive train)
c) At any given all-team meeting, make sure that you mentors feel empowered to put all the students to work; not just defer to your lead mentor.
d) Clearly differentiate between "mentors" and "chaperones" including all school-based legal ramifications of club field trips!
e) Once build season kicks-off, the students MUST be the owners of the design by consensus and brainstorming, but the mentors will inevitably have a big role in the execution of the design, etc. Strive for 100% student ownership (succeed or fail......)

Jeez, I think I learnred all of this in less than two years from Kim O'Toole.....FIRST must be rubbing-off on me.
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Team 1511 now supports over 15 FLL teams

RollingThunder....Winner of the 2007 Chairman's Award at Finger Lakes Regional and Spirit Award at Boston.....Winner of 2006 Finger Lakes Regional Engineering Inspriation and Boston Imagery awards.......Winner of 2005 World Championship Rookie All-Star (plus FLR Rookie All-Star, Buckeye Top-Seeded Rookie, GTR Champion, Spirit, and Inspiration)

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