Petition to Diminish Mentor Involvement

[Andrew Schreiber]

Recognize that the FIRST Robotics Competition is not a science fair and mentors should be required to work beside students.

The FIRST Robotics Competition, founded in 1992 by inventor Dean Kamen, is a robotics competition for pre-college students. Teams have 6 weeks to respond to a design challenge and fabricate a robot to compete against other teams from around the world, culminating in the FIRST Championship held annually in St. Louis.

Unfortunately, the competition, which is meant to introduce students to STEM and establish a fair playing field for all teams, currently allows minimal mentor involvement on the field of play. Mentor involvement, while important in the build process, is is significantly more important on the field as dealing with high pressure situations is an important teaching moment. Not requiring mentors to be present on the field of play diminishes the goals of FRC by forcing students to face a stressful situation alone and unguided.

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