Another Culture Change

[pfreivald]

I struggle with community members who think FIRST is 'elitist' becase there is a sharp divide between teams that have lots and lots of resources and teams that do not. We face an additional challenge of being extremely rural -- as in, 20 miles from the nearest stoplight -- and our town is so small that we are limited to two fundraisers a year (so as to not take opportunities from other extracurricular activities).

What I usually say when people start hating on the powerhouse teams is something like this:

"We can be like them. There are things they do better than we do, and how terrible would it be to try to 'level the playing field' by restricting them. They build awesome robots -- we can do that, too. They have more mentors -- we can recruit more. They have more money -- we are limited in that regard, but so what? We seeded higher than the Thunder Chickens at FLR last year, and shared a blue banner with them when *we* chose *them* for our alliance.

We have up years and down years. Usually we're middle of the pack. But every year our capabilities get better, our aspirations higher, and our drive stronger. This happens BECAUSE of teams like 217, 1114, 254 -- they are INSPIRATIONAL powerhouses who show the rest of us what true excellence really is, and they give us something to shoot for."

It usually is NOT the reaction most people are expecting -- they expect me to confide in them how upsetting the inherent unfairness is. I hope some of them listen to what I have to say!

I do my best to instill this attitude in my team members as well. Jealousy is a wasted emotion, and can easily be replaced with inspiration from the EXACT SAME EVENTS. Same situation, different response = win for everyone.

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Oh, and on student-vs-mentor built robots: We have always had a mix of the two, with mentors guiding and working with students to create the best product we can with the resources available. Our engineering decisions are ultimately made by the students, but are heavily informed by the engineers, and we do our best to make sure that students understand what the tradeoffs are in any decisions they make.

Our mentors work on some things with students; our students work on some things themselves. I think this is likely true on every team, whether they think so or not.

...but one of the things I see as an important aspect of FIRST, a part of the culture we hope to change, is getting more adults involved in the school. FIRST is, in my experience, the ONLY program that pulls in adults who are not simply helping out some activity that their child is involved with. Mentor involvement is essential to bringing more adults into our schools, so that they can inspire science and technology in kids.

So I would HOPE that robots are a collaboration between mentors and students, with the focus on the entire team doing the best they can AS A TEAM to create an excellent, competitive robot.

/ramble