Transitioning From Student to Mentor

[rick.oliver]

I am sharing my comments from the perspective of an experienced lead mentor who moved from an established team to a second year team this past season.

You have already received much good advice in these posts. I am quite sure that another established team will value the diversity of experience you will bring with you as you begin to mentor with a different team. When you identify opportunities for your new team to improve that are based on your experience, graciously share those with the team's lead mentor(s) and discuss what you learned through your experience and how it can benefit the team.

A previous post mentioned the importance of understanding your relationship with the students. It is important that you remember that you are there to mentor. While friendships may develop over time, you are there to be a role model. You can certainly support the student's by helping older mentors understand and appreciate the perspective of a student. Be very careful to remain objective. Always demonstrate respect for the mentors and the students and insist that each shows respect for one another.

FIRST has an excellent resource on their website (at least they did a year ago, have not looked lately) for mentoring.

Finally, congratulations on graduating, your success in FRC; good luck in college and thank you for joining the ranks of mentors. We need all the help we can get and I expect that you will be an excellent mentor.