Managing Grades and Responsibilities While On A FIRST Team

[SarahBeth]

We tell our kids that school and work comes first. They can't travel if they dont meet grade requirements (I think its a C- or better in everything) and while school lets out at 3, we don't start meetings until 6 - this means a lot of our kids just stay after school. Some have stuff to do (sports, or other meetings) and some want to do homework.

Last year we ran into the problem where we'd open the room right after school for kids who wanted to do homework and more kids would come in and distract them, which would lead to fooling around time. Now we're not really opening the room until about an hour or so before the meeting, but we're running into a problem where the library in our school only stays open for an hour after school, and the senior cafe (the other place that they can hang after school if they don't have an activity to be at) has all its tables up after school.

I think we're going to talk to our liaison at the school and open the room at 4pm, with the strict rule that if you come at 4pm, its essentially study hall and its going to be quiet so people can get their homework done. We want to encourage the kids to get their work done before robotics rather than wait until after they get home.