Mentor involvement

[smistthegreat]

This is a discussion that comes up multiple times each year, and usually gets pretty heated. If you'd like to read some productive discussion about the involvement of mentors, the search function is your best friend. Also, asking how other teams involved their students with the planning of trips, etc, is a perfectly legitimate question, however, a more specific title would have been appropriate.

In response to your question, on 1507, the teachers/lead mentors decide our itinerary and things like meals and hotels.

[xitaqua]

BERSDT (Broad Engagement Robotics Spiral Demo Team) provides free of charge a 7 week telecom for mentors.It is like having a mentor for mentors.

This past season we held the telecom on Mondays and mentors from 7 different teams in SoCal attended.

Besides giving an opportunity for us to share practices, it helps "moderate" mentor behavior, so that a mentor is not "doing all the work", if he or she is doing it, the telecom has helped them realize that.

Also it helps mentors see what other mentors in others team are doing to help ensure the team is "student led" in a way that is productive.

One day I will write a book about it...but as a teaser I seen student led team apply for a large grant, put mentor name on it and not have notified the mentor.

This year we hope to have the telecoms on a Monday at 7PM Central, if you are a mentor working for a company that can commit 7 weeks to attend the telecom, send me a PM. We are capping attendance to 12 teams.

Cheers,
Marcos.

[EricH]

All I'm going to say on the first part of the question/statement is this:

"Too much" mentor involvement is something that needs to be dealt with on a team by team basis. Different teams have different situations regarding mentors. Therefore, one team's "too much" may be another team's "too little" and vice versa. Just for reference, I have been unable to find any rule restricting mentor involvement to anything less than 100% in FRC game manuals, while FIRST's mission statement specifies "mentor-based programs" as one of their methods. Team methodology varies, of course, and I do not necessarily support teams doing 100% mentor builds, but I do not oppose them for having "too much" involvement.



Now, as to the rest of the question: In my opinion, students should be involved in filling out paperwork and planning travel and the like. They should have an input into travel especially. However, a mentor should have the final say in those--fill out your paperwork properly, for one, and for another, help make sure you're choosing a hotel for "correct" reasons. Also, more than likely a mentor would be the one paying for or arranging payment for travel. (Again, highly team-dependent, but a lot of people tend to have a rather dim view of high schoolers making sound financial decisions. Just a general thing you can pick up if you're observant enough.)