[Richard McClellan]

I've worked with or been around quite a few teacher sponsors throughout all of my FIRST and other robotics experience and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. My guess is that this teacher you're working with doesn't want to end up as just a figurehead sponsor who doesn't really run the team. Robotics is cool, and it's probably something he wants to be a big part of. I'm guessing that's why he reacted the way he did to your email.

I'm kind of like you, I'm the lead mentor for the current team that I'm with, and I like to lead the team. Our sponsor is different though in that he really doesn't have a big leadership role in the team, but he does have a good spirit about robotics, and is good at recruiting new members and stuff because of it.

Sometimes, however, I do wish that I was not left with so much of the responsibility to organize the logistics for every single team event that we have. This season I'm going to be solely in charge of coordinating kickoff, two full day training workshops (programming and CAD), every single team meeting, the team building location, all the tools, construction of our practice course, helping out three new rookie teams that have just started up, and not to mention being the primary mentor for building the actual robot. (Wow, now that I list all that out it's kinda daunting...). Plus I'm a 3rd year student in college, so I'll be managing schoolwork at the same time.

So, I understand how you like to lead everything, because I'm the same way, but you should use his interest in leading to your advantage. Try and meet with the sponsor regularly and discuss the details for everything, and ultimate, try and delegate the administrative stuff to him, because, you really don't want to be worrying about that anyways. "Mentor" this teacher along the way extensively since you have the FIRST experience, but if you delegate and let him do it, it'll ultimately relieve you of some of the stuff you really don't need to do, AND it will ensure team sustainability in the long run if you can get the sponsor doing a lot of the work.

Hope that helps, just remember, communicate as much as possible with the teacher, that's the best way to help clear things up.