Thread: Team Governance
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Unread 26-05-2006, 08:26
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Not2B Not2B is offline
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AKA: Brian Graham
FRC #0862 (Lightning Robotics)
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Re: Team Governance

Quote:
Originally Posted by GaryV1188
I just came across this discussion and found it interesting.

Question for Tim and Not2B - I presume both of your teams are sponsored by schools. Do you then have a teacher or other school staff member who is the responsible party, essentially the chief chaperone? Our school board would not give us permission to be a group, much less travel, without a school district employee being in charge.

We are a smaller team, about 20 kids max. Much of our decision-making can be done Town Hall style, where everyone gets to put in an opinion, and consensus is achieved. We have two teachers that have the primary responsibility for organization and control. One of them is technical, the other focuses on Chairmans and other activities. We have a couple engineering mentors from our sponsoring corporations, and they are mentors, not chaperones. (Although they are adults and take adult reponsibilities when dealing with kids - for example, if they saw kids engaging in inappropriate behavior, they would not hesitate to get involved just because it "wasn't their job description" to discipline.) We have a couple of parents, myself included, who are actively involved in robot design and build, and are classified as "parent mentors". Most of the rest of the parents are involved as boosters and supporters in a variety of ways - fund raising, transportation, chaperones, food, etc.
Yep - that's about right. We have 1 teacher from the school who takes care of all the school red tape, and acts as the head shaperone. We've never asked the school about running without the teacher, nor would I want to. The non-parent mentors and the parent mentors also have different rules. Example: I don't have a student on the team, so I can't drive students around. But a parent can drive students around.

And of course, if the non-parent mentors see something dangerous, or think a student is going to do something stupid, we would obviously stop them or talk to them. I would hope that just because someone isn't an offical chaperone doesn't mean that wouldn't help out. Not being a chaperone just means I can go to dinner with my wife after a day of robots in Atlanta without worring about the students.

On the other hand, I just took the 8 hour night shift "chaperoneing" our 24 hour relay for life tent. So we do help out.

So when is 1188 going to win a chairman's award? I've been waiting...
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