Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Cory

I don't think I'm getting my point across...The rhetorical device you're taking to the extreme is a straw man and is what is confusing the issue. There are not two extremes...There is one extreme (students do everything) and one case to the right of 50/50, but to the left of the extreme of "mentors doing all the work".

We can't have reasonable discourse about two different methods of running teams when actually nobody is doing the second method as stated and it's an inflammatory construct designed to push public opinion to the opposite side of the spectrum.

Could we have a discussion about the other extreme (Students do 100%)? I personally feel those teams are more against the spirit of FRC than the theoretical 100% Engineer Built team.

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Could we have a discussion about the other extreme (Students do 100%)? I personally feel those teams are more against the spirit of FRC than the theoretical 100% Engineer Built team.

Sure. There are losses in both directions - I'm equally sure I wouldn't have gained anything if I had been on a team with no mentors at all that had hobbled together some barely-working box-on-wheels and not won any matches.

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Could we have a discussion about the other extreme (Students do 100%)? I personally feel those teams are more against the spirit of FRC than the theoretical 100% Engineer Built team.

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this point is an important one to me. Having been captain of a mostly student run team for all four years of high school, I can honestly say that I hated it. I had nobody on the team to learn from, no experience greater than my own to reference, and the only way the team learned was by seeing our mistakes finally unfold at the competition. I designed the robot, built the robot, and led the team, and I wish I could have had 50-50 mentor/student involvement more than anything. I would have happily sacrificed two of my four seasons to have someone more experienced in these areas work with me. When I see teams talk about how proud they are of their student-run team, I cannot help but feel sorry for them and the lies they keep telling themselves. I was not proud of my robot that scored 0 inner tubes my entire first season. I was not proud of red carding our alliance because we didn't know any better. I was not proud of resorting to defense at 8 of my 10 competitions because we couldn't score. I was not proud of losing. The FIRST program is about the students, but what makes or breaks a team is the mentors. I was very fortunate to have some of the best mentors in FIRST reach out to me via Chief Delphi and social networks and help me along the way, and the effect they had on me and my team showed in our 2014 robot, the first robot made by my team that I would consider "competitive" in our history since at least 2003. We went from an unsuccessful, non-inspiring team to one that inspired its students and built an effective, competitive design that performed well in competition, not because of me, but because of the amazing mentors from these other teams who were kind enough to share their knowledge and experience with us.

I see all of these people in this thread complaining about mentors being too involved and teams who have more resources than them, when I suffered through almost four years of brutal, uninspiring failure because my team matched the "ideal" that these other students and mentors claim FIRST should be more like. I've become a mentor now because I don't want any student to have to experience FRC the way I did. I remember coming home crying at some point in the build season each year, telling my parents how badly I wanted to quit because it was too much and we were too unprepared. This program is about the experience for students, and nobody should have to experience a team without sufficient mentor involvement. Nobody in FIRST should promote the type of team that lets these kinds of things happen, and to those who still think that sufficient mentor involvement is bad, HS freshman me would like to politely ask you to leave.

[bduddy]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this point is an important one to me. Having been captain of a mostly student run team for all four years of high school, I can honestly say that I hated it. I had nobody on the team to learn from, no experience greater than my own to reference, and the only way the team learned was by seeing our mistakes finally unfold at the competition. I designed the robot, built the robot, and led the team, and I wish I could have had 50-50 mentor/student involvement more than anything. I would have happily sacrificed two of my four seasons to have someone more experienced in these areas work with me. When I see teams talk about how proud they are of their student-run team, I cannot help but feel sorry for them and the lies they keep telling themselves. I was not proud of my robot that scored 0 inner tubes my entire first season. I was not proud of red carding our alliance because we didn't know any better. I was not proud of resorting to defense at 8 of my 10 competitions because we couldn't score. I was not proud of losing. The FIRST program is about the students, but what makes or breaks a team is the mentors. I was very fortunate to have some of the best mentors in FIRST reach out to me via Chief Delphi and social networks and help me along the way, and the effect they had on me and my team showed in our 2014 robot, the first robot made by my team that I would consider "competitive" in our history since at least 2003. We went from an unsuccessful, non-inspiring team to one that inspired its students and built an effective, competitive design that performed well in competition, not because of me, but because of the amazing mentors from these other teams who were kind enough to share their knowledge and experience with us.

I see all of these people in this thread complaining about mentors being too involved and teams who have more resources than them, when I suffered through almost four years of brutal, uninspiring failure because my team matched the "ideal" that these other students and mentors claim FIRST should be more like. I've become a mentor now because I don't want any student to have to experience FRC the way I did. I remember coming home crying at some point in the build season each year, telling my parents how badly I wanted to quit because it was too much and we were too unprepared. This program is about the experience for students, and nobody should have to experience a team without sufficient mentor involvement. Nobody in FIRST should promote the type of team that lets these kinds of things happen, and to those who still think that sufficient mentor involvement is bad, HS freshman me would like to politely ask you to leave.

I was on a student-run team with a couple of technical mentors, and even though we never won anything, it was one of the best experiences of my life. Your personal experience (nor mine) is not representative of all participants, and the one part of your post that does upset me is where you equate losing with being a bad team. Yes, I know this is your own experience, and I myself hate losing as much as the next guy, but there's a whole lot you can get out of FIRST - arguably more - when you don't have a great robot or the immediately accessible resources to make one.

[hzheng_449]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

When I see teams talk about how proud they are of their student-run team, I cannot help but feel sorry for them and the lies they keep telling themselves.

What exactly you mean by this?

What "lies" do teams that are proud of being student-run tell themselves?

Are they lying to themselves when they say that students gain an invaluable learning experience leading the design and fabrication of a FRC robot. (Which is an experience almost impossible to get in a high school setting?)

Are they lying to themselves when Students recognize their team's failures, analyze and learn from said failures, and take the initiative to restructure the team, spend extra effort in the offseason, and start improving?

Are they deluding themselves when they are proud of the robot they build not because of how well it perform, but because they have sense of ownership and achievement of the machine that they have poured their (literal) blood sweat and tears into building.

Please tell me: what "lies" are these teams telling themselves and why exactly do you feel sorry for them.

[Mr. Mike]

This discussion has not change in the 6 years I have been involved with FIRST.
What it really comes down to is how you perceive success. Is it banner count, amount of resources, number of students, number of mentors? We are here to inspire. Some can do it with very little, others with lots of time and help.
There is a lot to learn out of admiration and emulation. I have yet to learn anything out of jealousy.

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by hzheng_449

Please tell me: what "lies" are these teams telling themselves and why exactly do you feel sorry for them.

I feel sorry for "student-run" teams that delude themselves into thinking their way is the only way an FRC team can be run. Teams are run that way and think any alternative to it is lesser or invalid, regardless of any accomplishments these alternatives may have. I know from personal experience.

It's toxic, wrong, pathetic, and most importantly stupid.

The lies told?

1) from top to bottom, everything is controlled by a raucous band of teenagers revolving through the door of a four year high school. For example: if your school administrator is going to you for field trip information or handing you keys to a classroom, that person probably is in the wrong line of work. If your school administrator is not doing those things, you're not truly a "student-run" team and instead are loosely corralled by a contingent of adults monitoring the program instead of help giving it the guidance FIRST thinks it deserves.

2) that it's supposed to be that way. IT'S NOT! When I think of an ideal FIRST team, structurally, I don't actually think of 254 or 1114 or whatever team you might think of. I actually think of 190 for its partnership(I also think of 842 when it comes to building a Hall of Fame program). A 50/50 partnership between a sponsoring organization (Mass Academy) and Contributing Sponsor (WPI) that extends from funding down to leadership.

When FRC was the only program FIRST offered almost 25 years ago, the whole program was about an institution like Xerox or Motorola or Delphi Automotive or E-Systems or WPI adopting a school and showing them how cool it was to be an engineer. Obviously that kind of relationship is a rarity in FIRST ever since the program was retooled back before the 2 v 2 era. Still, 190 is a team that has existed that way successfully and uninterrupted every year since 1992. It's the way Dean Kamen saw teams coming to be, and I still think it's one of the best ways for a team to come together (there are many great ways to do it, this one just never gets enough credit).

As someone who was a student on a "student-run" team before I learned how to overcome inertia and turn the same program into a team that I consider to be a 50/50 partnership, I know the lies we told ourselves. I also know we built up a pretty strong inferiority complex.

[Rangel(kf7fdb)]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this point is an important one to me. Having been captain of a mostly student run team for all four years of high school, I can honestly say that I hated it. I had nobody on the team to learn from, no experience greater than my own to reference, and the only way the team learned was by seeing our mistakes finally unfold at the competition. I designed the robot, built the robot, and led the team, and I wish I could have had 50-50 mentor/student involvement more than anything. I would have happily sacrificed two of my four seasons to have someone more experienced in these areas work with me. When I see teams talk about how proud they are of their student-run team, I cannot help but feel sorry for them and the lies they keep telling themselves. I was not proud of my robot that scored 0 inner tubes my entire first season. I was not proud of red carding our alliance because we didn't know any better. I was not proud of resorting to defense at 8 of my 10 competitions because we couldn't score. I was not proud of losing. The FIRST program is about the students, but what makes or breaks a team is the mentors. I was very fortunate to have some of the best mentors in FIRST reach out to me via Chief Delphi and social networks and help me along the way, and the effect they had on me and my team showed in our 2014 robot, the first robot made by my team that I would consider "competitive" in our history since at least 2003. We went from an unsuccessful, non-inspiring team to one that inspired its students and built an effective, competitive design that performed well in competition, not because of me, but because of the amazing mentors from these other teams who were kind enough to share their knowledge and experience with us.

I see all of these people in this thread complaining about mentors being too involved and teams who have more resources than them, when I suffered through almost four years of brutal, uninspiring failure because my team matched the "ideal" that these other students and mentors claim FIRST should be more like. I've become a mentor now because I don't want any student to have to experience FRC the way I did. I remember coming home crying at some point in the build season each year, telling my parents how badly I wanted to quit because it was too much and we were too unprepared. This program is about the experience for students, and nobody should have to experience a team without sufficient mentor involvement. Nobody in FIRST should promote the type of team that lets these kinds of things happen, and to those who still think that sufficient mentor involvement is bad, HS freshman me would like to politely ask you to leave.

Not everyone who is on a mainly student run team has these types of experiences. I know many many people from different FRC teams where students do 99 percent of the work and they are just as capable and as good of problem solvers as I am coming from a team that had some pretty inspirational mentors. I don't think there is anything wrong with being proud to be on a team where you struggled and persisted but learned a heck of a lot nor do I think they are lying to themselves. I would argue that you turned out pretty well despite this. And the alternative is would you rather of been on a struggling team or no team at all? I can't speak for FRC but I was on a struggling FLL team where basically our mentor was never around and I was the only one of three who even did anything productive and basically taught ourselves everything we needed. We didn't win anything and was very stressful especially with how young I was but I'd rather of at least had the opportunity than not. Not directed towards you but a general question people can ask themselves as a whole. Of course it's great to have mentors but if low mentor involvement is a team's thing, then let them do it I say. If the students are happy, inspired, and proud I can't see the fault. This isn't the case in every mainly student driven team but there are many out there.

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this point is an important one to me. Having been captain of a mostly student run team for all four years of high school, I can honestly say that I hated it. I had nobody on the team to learn from, no experience greater than my own to reference, and the only way the team learned was by seeing our mistakes finally unfold at the competition. I designed the robot, built the robot, and led the team, and I wish I could have had 50-50 mentor/student involvement more than anything. I would have happily sacrificed two of my four seasons to have someone more experienced in these areas work with me. When I see teams talk about how proud they are of their student-run team, I cannot help but feel sorry for them and the lies they keep telling themselves. I was not proud of my robot that scored 0 inner tubes my entire first season. I was not proud of red carding our alliance because we didn't know any better. I was not proud of resorting to defense at 8 of my 10 competitions because we couldn't score. I was not proud of losing. The FIRST program is about the students, but what makes or breaks a team is the mentors. I was very fortunate to have some of the best mentors in FIRST reach out to me via Chief Delphi and social networks and help me along the way, and the effect they had on me and my team showed in our 2014 robot, the first robot made by my team that I would consider "competitive" in our history since at least 2003. We went from an unsuccessful, non-inspiring team to one that inspired its students and built an effective, competitive design that performed well in competition, not because of me, but because of the amazing mentors from these other teams who were kind enough to share their knowledge and experience with us.

I see all of these people in this thread complaining about mentors being too involved and teams who have more resources than them, when I suffered through almost four years of brutal, uninspiring failure because my team matched the "ideal" that these other students and mentors claim FIRST should be more like. I've become a mentor now because I don't want any student to have to experience FRC the way I did. I remember coming home crying at some point in the build season each year, telling my parents how badly I wanted to quit because it was too much and we were too unprepared. This program is about the experience for students, and nobody should have to experience a team without sufficient mentor involvement. Nobody in FIRST should promote the type of team that lets these kinds of things happen, and to those who still think that sufficient mentor involvement is bad, HS freshman me would like to politely ask you to leave.

I don't think there's many people here who are arguing for a 100% student team... the whole point of the program is to get mentors and students together. That said, there is tremendous opportunity for a student-led team which has mentors to advise them as they go. My team is student-led. The students make almost all the decisions. Mentors do the purchases, are responsible for selecting team captains (with student input), determining who letters. Those are the only times we get to actually make decisions. The rest of the time, we give advise, we teach, we provide options or feedback on ideas, and we make sure everyone is safe.

I've seen teams that have only a single teacher "working" with them. While what they can accomplish with no professional help is impressive (seriously, you have to put it in perspective and not try to compare it to what teams with more resources have done at that point), I can only imagine what it's like going through the season without someone to lean on. Even as a mentor, if I was the only one working with my team, I would feel completely overwhelmed. If I come across one of those teams at an event I'm working at, I try to give them a little extra attention, assistance, and guidance throughout the event.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

I wasn't going to comment on this thread, but this point is an important one to me. Having been captain of a mostly student run team for all four years of high school, I can honestly say that I hated it. I had nobody on the team to learn from, no experience greater than my own to reference, and the only way the team learned was by seeing our mistakes finally unfold at the competition. I designed the robot, built the robot, and led the team, and I wish I could have had 50-50 mentor/student involvement more than anything. I would have happily sacrificed two of my four seasons to have someone more experienced in these areas work with me. When I see teams talk about how proud they are of their student-run team, I cannot help but feel sorry for them and the lies they keep telling themselves. I was not proud of my robot that scored 0 inner tubes my entire first season. I was not proud of red carding our alliance because we didn't know any better. I was not proud of resorting to defense at 8 of my 10 competitions because we couldn't score. I was not proud of losing. The FIRST program is about the students, but what makes or breaks a team is the mentors. I was very fortunate to have some of the best mentors in FIRST reach out to me via Chief Delphi and social networks and help me along the way, and the effect they had on me and my team showed in our 2014 robot, the first robot made by my team that I would consider "competitive" in our history since at least 2003. We went from an unsuccessful, non-inspiring team to one that inspired its students and built an effective, competitive design that performed well in competition, not because of me, but because of the amazing mentors from these other teams who were kind enough to share their knowledge and experience with us.

I see all of these people in this thread complaining about mentors being too involved and teams who have more resources than them, when I suffered through almost four years of brutal, uninspiring failure because my team matched the "ideal" that these other students and mentors claim FIRST should be more like. I've become a mentor now because I don't want any student to have to experience FRC the way I did. I remember coming home crying at some point in the build season each year, telling my parents how badly I wanted to quit because it was too much and we were too unprepared. This program is about the experience for students, and nobody should have to experience a team without sufficient mentor involvement. Nobody in FIRST should promote the type of team that lets these kinds of things happen, and to those who still think that sufficient mentor involvement is bad, HS freshman me would like to politely ask you to leave.

I feel for you. There are days when I want to throw in the towel and just quit, because I think we can't win.
And while it's very demoralizing to be unable to drive, or placing 50th out of 58th at a regional, it's fantastic when you get picked or end up in elims on your own.
And I've noticed, for rookies and veterans alike, the real joy comes not only from building a working robot but from the process itself; I have three rookies this year who all want to learn machining and CAD design after seeing how much I was working.
Winning used to be my drive, but lately I've found that as long as the team continues to get new members who can have this once-in-a-lifetime chance to build a robot, I'm okay with how things go. I feel the need to win to show the new people that we can win.