Coaches/Mentors on the Drive Team

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by MentorOfSteel

Everyone seems to agree that FIRST is about training and inspiring the technical leaders of tomorrow,...

I do not agree.

The mission of FIRST is "to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders" -- the word "training" does not appear. While the mission statement includes the phrases "build skills" and "foster life capabilities", I believe those are not what FIRST is "about". Depending on the team, they can be a tool for accomplishing the mission, but they are often a secondary effect of how the programs are run.

The best way to create leaders is to give them opportunities to lead.

A great way to create effective leaders is to give them examples of effective leadership. You don't get good machinists just by giving people opportunities to use a mill; you get good machinists by having them watch and work with good machinists. If you have a good adult leader acting as the drive coach, you can inspire very good leadership from the students.

If you don't have an inspirational role model available, then there's probably no loss in having a student learn "on the job". But for those teams fortunate enough to have high-quality mentors, I don't see a reason not to take advantage of them.