Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by Nick Lawrence

So, here's a thought. How is having a robot that is somewhat mentor-driven any different from a team full of students purchasing COTS items and utilizing great products such as the AM14U2? Many of the products from vendors like AndyMark, BaneBots, IR3 and VEXPro are designed by active FIRST mentors for the teams.

I think the crucial difference here is that these mentors are making the fruits of their labors available to all teams, rather than just one at a time. Granted, a new scarce resource (money) is then required to take advantage of this.

[MrJohnston]

One thing that makes this conversation difficult is that we are largely talking in absolutes. The fact of that matter is that there is a continuum of every factor that leads to a team's success (or lack thereof).

*No robot is 100% mentor built. Likewise, there is no robot that doesn't benefit, at some level, from mentor support.

* Let's face it, financial health is a PART of any successful team's health. Power tools, milling machines, waterjet cutting, machine shop sponsors etc. all give a teams the ability to expand their abilities and be more efficient - thus enhancing their abilities.

* At the same time, infinite finances cannot overcome a complete lack of technical knowledge.

And so on...

The relationship between the students and mentors is at the very heart of FIRST's mission. There is a reason we call these adults "mentors" and not "supervisors" or "babysitters." There is a reason we have mentor parades and go out of our way to thank them. Students are learners and are only going to learn the fundamentals of engineering if they are working side-by-side with their mentors.

The real question is, "What is the appropriate balance between mentor and student labor?" I think of this much like I do my math classrooms. Some students just need a little bit of guidance and they are ready to fly. Others need prolonged attention and repeated modeling of processes if they are to learn. In education each teacher is expected to learn and work with the very specific needs of each child and each classroom. How is mentoring different?

If the job is "build the robot" and you have a group of very inexperienced students who can barely turn a screwdriver, the mentors will have to be very "hands on" just to keep the kids safe and get something rolling. With the same job, if you have students who have been around robots for several years, the mentors have a choice: either turn it over to them and let them put their knowledge to use -or teach them more advanced engineering. The latter would require more hand-holding, but would result in a better robot. What's wrong with that?

I have seen the these "elite" teams - and their kids know the robot. I see the kids making repairs. I see the kids talking about its functionality. The kids are learning - and loving it. They are inspired.

I also don't believe that "just any team" can replicate their efforts. They have mentors who are not only strong engineers, but have many years of FIRST experience and have, thus, developed a very strong familiarity with FRC robots and can think of half a dozen ways to successfully accomplish "new" tasks very quickly. Sometimes I look at it like this: If one school hires the best and most experienced football coaching staff, do they have an "unfair" advantage? If they have a former NFL QB working individually with their QB's, is this unfair? No, it's just a fantastic resource that they have.

I am certain that if you took all the Cheesy Poofs mentors away, replacing them with equally as many mentors from other teams but otherwise left them with all their resources, their performance would slip - even if the other mentors had the same level of "involvement" in the build as the current mentors.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by Cory

I'm not sure how you came away with that impression based on the quoted rule.

It's quite clear that FIRST wants teams to develop relationships with companies and consider them team members. It literally says that. It then says that if a sponsor is a team member, you do not account for cost of labor.

I honestly hadn't thought that was FIRST's intent, and I don't think that rule lends favor to that opinion, but I could certainly understand if that is what FIRST wants.

The rule in question : "and has it machined by a local machine shop that is a recognized Sponsor of the Team. If the machinists are considered members of the Team, their labor costs do not apply."

It specifically delineates the difference between "a company that is a sponsor" and "specific machinists who both works at the company and are members of the team". If the machinists is not considered a member of the team, then the machining cost must be accounted for correct? I'm mostly wondering for my own team where there is a single machinist who only a parent on our team has met and who has machined things for us. No team member (adult or student) has seen or spoken to this person, and I'm not sure how I could call them a "member of the team". If we create a relationship between them an our team, then it seems much more straight forward.


Just to be clear, I am fully in support of how you guys (and other powerhouse teams similar to you) run your teams. I think you provide a unique and inspiring experience. Teams absolutely should be able to use whatever industrial resources they are able to acquire. I'm just curious about the reporting of those costs because I had assumed something that appears to be very different from reality.

[waialua359]

Originally Posted by Siri

One, I think you're exactly right. And two, the bolded statement blows my mind. For those of you not yet playing at home, the legendary HoF Team 842 did this:

2003 - SoCal Delphi Award & Semifinalists
2004 & 2005 - Arizona EI
2005 - World Championship EI
2006 - Arizona Chairman's, Worlds Chairman's HM
2007 - Arizona Finalists & Chairman's, Las Vegas EI
2008 - Hall of Fame, Championship Division Finalists, Las Vegas Finalists, Arizona Chairman's & Safety & Semis, Los Angeles & Las Vegas Entrepreneurship
2009 - Arizona Judges' & Safety
2010 - Las Vegas Creativity & Semis, Arizona GP & Semis

...without an engineering mentor.

With so many stories of current struggle, there are others who did in fact make it. Oh, and sometimes those guys end up with a feature-length movie about them starring George Lopez and Jamie Lee Curtis.

We often felt like we were Team 842 in many ways with respect to the hardships, socio-economic background of our community and focuses early on in our program. We went through a long period of not having an engineering mentor on our construction team as well (I dont count myself as an engineer even with the degree). Our only engineering mentors today are young former students with respect to designing and building the robots with our students.
Team 842 provides many examples of how to build your program with great successes vs. the amount of resources they had to work with.

[Siri]

Originally Posted by waialua359

We often felt like we were Team 842 in many ways with respect to the hardships, socio-economic background of our community and focuses early on in our program. We went through a long period of not having an engineering mentor on our construction team as well (I dont count myself as an engineer even with the degree). Our only engineering mentors today are young former students with respect to designing and building the robots with our students.
Team 842 provides many examples of how to build your program with great successes vs. the amount of resources they had to work with.

Wow, I walked right into that. Yes, of course, you guys too! I feel like we need a place to aggregate all these incredible stories, both to help people understand different philosophies about mentorship/sponsorship, and so that we can be inspired by the all different rocky roads to success. And you know, so I don't ignore HoF teams who are literally on an island and just posted about it.

I don't know much about the exact mentor/student relationship on most HoF or otherwise elite teams, but between the 842 story, Hawaiian Kids, and 103 (who literally started the FIRST rural support network), there must certainly be a lot of amazing underdog stories out there. It's hard to argue that a great team with an awesome robot that won every regional it went to might be getting something handed to them when said arm would have to be 2500 miles long.

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.

[rhinobot]

I wasn't going to comment either, however I am frankly quite upset reading all these comments. As a first year mentor of a rookie team I have been able to work closely with students and teach them the skills they need to succeed in FIRST. Without mentors students would not be able to compete/would compete very poorly, as at first they lack the necessary skills. Much like my first year. 3 years ago I was a rookie student and we had little mentor guidance, it was terrible as none of us knew what we were doing, and in the end I was the only one that carried on with robotics after that year (with another team, due to no teacher support with the old team). I am blessed to have been able to teach these students and it makes me feel great knowing I have taught them something new that will benefit them in the long run. I know that veteran teams have very experienced students within them, in this situation yes, the students are self sufficient....but everyone does need guidance and often a push in the right direction, which mentors can provide. I have also had experience with a mentor that was too involved, its hard to find a happy medium, every team has a different mentor:student ratio, and how they achieve that is whatever policy is in that teams handbook (if applicable). No two teams will be the same. However at the end of the day mentors make the FIRST experience, they allow the students to learn new skills, and most importantly be inspired. Win or lose on gameday, if your students are inspired and had a good time, thats a win in my books.

[bduddy]

Here come the false equivalencies again. No one is arguing that teams should have minimal or no mentor involvement. Some people are arguing that some/many teams have too much mentor involvement.

Why do all of these threads inevitably turn into people arguing against a position that was never advanced?

[EricH]

Originally Posted by mentorDon

How many Squawkers here could build a robot for less than $4000 if they had to count CNC machining time at $100+ per hour and all materials?

I'll also bite.

I'll speak for two teams in this post: Yep, and Yep.

For one simple reason: One of the teams has minimal to no CNC access, and drills/cuts/welds everything in shop, or if something is sent it's sent to a shop that a team member or mentor has access to use the machines in. The other has CNC access...Run by the shop owner, who is a team mentor, with students there! (If the manual machines weren't being used instead, that is.) Last I checked, the shop still supports an FRC team or two as a sponsor and mentor. Per FRC accounting rules, the only cost there is materials. And if they HAD to count CNC time, probably no more than $1K at $100/hr, easily.

Both teams make reasonably frequent trips to eliminations (and hopefully playoffs), I might add.

[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.

[Rangel]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.