Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies

[Oblarg]

Originally Posted by bduddy

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

Debate culture demands that people concede nothing, lest they lose face. It's much easier to not concede anything when you argue against a caricature.

Moreover, creating emotional distance between yourself and how your team is run is difficult, and so criticisms are taken personally and people get defensive.

[who716]

Originally Posted by magnets

FRC: FIRST Robotics Competition.

It's a competition. There is no rule that says we cannot have a team of 300 of the brightest engineers build our robot for us. Team 254 inspires students by winning and being better than 99% of everybody else. That's their call to make, and not ours to discuss or criticize.

idk how i feel about this, its a competition and i grew up racing and one thing you learn about competition is if you can get an edge on someone by all means do what ever you cant to get that edge, would i be inspired watching mentors build a robot like 254 probably not, would i be inspired driving a robot like 254 on Einstein in front of thousands of people, and winning heck yeah.

now do i get do drive a robot like 254 in front of a thousands of people on Einstein and win........ no and most likely never will so do i feel its unfair absolutely so i think there is a curtain amount of criticism we are aloud to speak.

[mwmac]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

Debate culture demands that people concede nothing, lest they lose face. It's much easier to not concede anything when you argue against a caricature.

Moreover, creating emotional distance between yourself and how your team is run is difficult, and so criticisms are taken personally and people get defensive.

No it doesn't... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

[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.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by bduddy

Here come the false equivalencies again. No one is arguing that teams should have minimal or no mentor involvement.

I disagree. I've seen students argue that teams ought to be run without mentors. Not a large amount, and not in this thread, but this is pretty much a discussion that comes up every six months or less, and a large part of the time either the OP or a poster early on talks about how great their student run, student built, no mentor team is and how it's exactly what FIRST wants. That's also when the thread usually takes the dive to dead horse emoticons and people complaining that we've had this discussion a million times before (big surprise).

// Meta thread discussion
Part of the reason I think many people are defaulting to arguing that point is that it's the point that has been brought up in the past. While I agree that it would be more constructive to focus on the grey in between, it's very understandable that some (especially veteran forum members) default to this line of argument. I've been on here for the last four seasons, and I already put these threads in the "not going to touch that with a HAZMAT suit and a 30-foot pole" category. I can't imagine how some of the people who have been on here for the last 10-15 years feel about it.

I'm actually a bit surprised (pleasantly) that there's been a higher ratio of constructive conversation in this thread than there usually is. I have some theories on why I think this might be the case but I'll probably post them in a thread with a more relevant topic later.
// End meta-discussion

End note: In these types of threads I try to always remind myself that the people posting almost always have the best intentions in mind-- inspiring students, changing culture, the whole shebang. Sometimes it's difficult to figure out where people came that leads to their current perspective, but that difficulty makes it all the more important to try. Having been on the other side recently of someone assuming that I had poor intentions, it can be really bewildering and confusing when someone assumes you're out for blood on their ideas. For both sides of the coin, taking a step back and looking for alternative explanations to the first assumption can be very valuable towards having a constructive dialogue.

[Scott Kozutsky]

As I see it, the goal of FIRST is to inspire and to teach.

Mentors are there to help guide kids in the right direction and allow them to use and understand tools they would otherwise not have access to. You can plop a kid in front of a mill or lathe and check that they don't kill themselves but they'll learn a lot more if you guide them.

That kid will also be a lot more inspired if they make something awesome instead of fumbling figuring out what was going on.

As I see it the best teams are the ones with the best process of guiding students into fields that they enjoy. Having more tools and resources allows students to learn more and make more awesome stuff. (I know 865 is going to continue using CNC despite being more competitive because it's a valuable learning tool, being competitive is an added benefit)

254 and 1114 are both teams with a lot of resources and as a result the kids that come out of them are some of the best that FRC has to offer. They are educated in engineering and very enthusiastic. It's worth it even if mentors helped along the way.

I don't like that we're discouraging devoted mentors from doing what they love. I want more students to learn more and I don't agree that less mentor involvement is going to do that.

[JamesTerm]

Originally Posted by JamesTerm

Hey all,

I posted this sometime back, and wish to take a moment to speak to the mentors as this may be somewhat off topic from Mentor/Student involvement philosophies, but then... maybe it is on topic... you decide.

Firstly, I do not consider myself a leader as I don't think I am ready or want to take on this responsibility, and I do not claim to have all the answers... what I tell you here is what I've observed, experienced, and want to share it with you. This is about the picture posted here and what it means to me.

When you look at that picture... know that the guy who posted it is one of those followers has been with the same "leader" for the past 14 years, and is very happy where he is. Why is that? I admire my "boss/leader" and he's been a mentor to me (even though I do not tell him this). I get up every morning looking forward to going to work, and taking on the new challenges of the day... all the jobs prior to this where just a job... a boss, and something I dreaded going to.

I tell our students that mentors have mentors, and to find someone better that you at what you do and stay with them. This is what I've done... I know who is better than me and I learn as much as I can from them, and adopt some of their ways as a part of my own... I believe I will continue to learn for the rest of my life... when I'm old... I refuse to be set in my ways... still wanting to learn.

So let me try to bring this back on topic... I know what kind of leader I am committed to and what makes me happy each day. Can I offer this to the students? I don't know! I can say even though I don't claim to be a leader I have taken responsibility among the co-workers in our team and naturally take a lead of things here and there but in a cooperative nature. It is hard to explain, but I feel... as I've learned in the military a good follower can become a great leader.

[Knufire]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

I talked about "magic" on the Einstein thread, and got no response. I still believe there is magic on some teams. I don't know what it is, and I doubt the folks on the teams know what it is, either.

During my senior year of high school (2013), 469 had the drive team and one or two mentors in a car to St. Louis when the bus with the rest of the team broke down. We spent a significant part of that ride trying to figure out what we had done differently that year that lead to such a high degree of success compared to previous years. We never really figured it out.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by 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?

Because we always bad mouth the teams that have "too much mentor involvement" (by some arbitrary metric that the poster decides) but I find the notion of student run teams, a topic that has been lauded by many on here as admirable, to be an abomination of the ideals and concepts of FIRST. There are many other competitions in which students do 100% of the work with limited mentor involvement, FRC is different. So I advanced the topic, because I've not seen any real discussion as to whether we should be as harshly critical to all student teams as people seem to be to "overly" mentored teams.

Are the two equal? No. One is, in my opinion, and according to many comments from FIRST HQ, doing FRC wrong. The other has mentors working with students.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Because we always bad mouth the teams that have "too much mentor involvement" (by some arbitrary metric that the poster decides) but I find the notion of student run teams, a topic that has been lauded by many on here as admirable, to be an abomination of the ideals and concepts of FIRST. There are many other competitions in which students do 100% of the work with limited mentor involvement, FRC is different. So I advanced the topic, because I've not seen any real discussion as to whether we should be as harshly critical to all student teams as people seem to be to "overly" mentored teams.

Are the two equal? No. One is, in my opinion, and according to many comments from FIRST HQ, doing FRC wrong. The other has mentors working with students.

Actually, could you name some of those student-run programs for me? I want to suggest some robotics programs to a few of the younger kids I know that aren't going to my HS, and I don't want to just tell them "FRC is the only one".

[Lil' Lavery]

Originally Posted by asid61

Actually, could you name some of those student-run programs for me? I want to suggest some robotics programs to a few of the younger kids I know that aren't going to my HS, and I don't want to just tell them "FRC is the only one".

http://www.robotevents.com/

[iVanDuzer]

Originally Posted by MrForbes

That's true. But I think it is not nearly the whole story.

I've spent some time reading and watching mentors on elite teams describing their process, and their analyses of various things about games and robots, and I don't really learn much new. What I haven't seen from them, is a frank discussion about how to motivate a team. I don't even know if it's possible, because I think some people are just natural leaders, and they don't really know how they do it.

(sorry in advance for the essay)

Karthik agreed with you and called it "magic." Knufire said the same thing about 469. I disagree. I don't think it's called "magic." I think it's called "pressure."

I believe that FRC teams go through three stages on their road to powerhouse status:

1) A well-organized team structure and mentor base. This is the greatest benefit a mentor can give to a team in terms of seeing on-field results. 2056 and 3710 (and I'm sure many others) have mentors who do not touch the robot or fundraising package at all. Their job is to organize, fill out paperwork, keep everyone in the loop.

You need organization to actually develop from year to year. You can have passionate students (step two), but without the organization, your on-field results will be flashes in the pan, as opposed to a veritable gold rush.

2) Passionate students and excellent mentors. You can have really, really technically gifted mentors, but if you only have 3 students, and those students see the team more as after-school hangouts than a robotics team, then you're not going to have a competitive robot.

These students, when given the right resources (in FRC, these are mentors) grow. And they love FIRST. Adore it. Imagine a team of 10 Andrew Lawrences (you might not like his post in this thread, but the guy is so crazy about FIRST it blows my mind). This was actually a reality for the early days of 2056. The core group was so passionate about FIRST that they didn't just breathe it, they lived it. And we were lucky enough to have great mentors to fan the flames.

You don't have to work to motivate these students, because they'll actually be begging you to work longer hours, to open the shop early, to work on new drive trains.

This is where success first starts to happen. Your team might win a regional, or a chairman's award, or make consistent finals appearances. But eventually, your core of passionate students graduates and moves on. Which is where stage 3 comes in...

3) Pressure. 2056 has won 19 straight regional victories. Do you have any idea how much pressure the current team is under? There is a looming cloud that says "we can't be the group that broke the streak." But it's not a bad cloud - it's a motivator.

Many of the powerhouse teams do well because they are expected to. It's hard for newcomers to "get" the team until their first competition, but they usually get it shortly thereafter. Seeing exactly how your team is regarded is one motivator. Actually winning is a huge one - it's a great feeling, and you want to capture it.

So as a second-year student, you know the stakes. You know that the community sees you as a winner. And you will do anything, anything, to keep that mantle. This pushes students who are already passionate, or even just semi-passionate, to being uber-passionate. Powerhouse teams have students that buy into the team's culture of success. No need to externally motivate when the motivation to build on and surpass previous accomplishments is ingrained into every student by their own observations.

CASE STUDY: A great example is 1717. What's going on on D'Penguineers? All of their students have no prior FRC experience - the team is only made up of grade 12s. But they are consistently one of the best teams in FRC.

Well, they're well organized: they have a great education system that starts well before the students are on the team with VEX. They had a group of passionate team members who developed what is probably FIRST's best swerve drive. And now their current team has access to these previously developed systems, and they are pressured into using them to the best of their abilities (because they only get one shot at this, remember?). Boom, powerhouse team.

The tricky thing about continued success is that it's really, really hard. If you lose any of those three stages, your team's on-field performance will suffer. Your group of students can feel pressured, but if they aren't passionate, the pressure will break them. If your team loses its organization, it's harder to reallocate resources and succeed.

When you are part of these teams, you don't really feel the pressure. You feel a drive, and a passion, but you don't really know where it comes from. That's why Karthik and Las Guerillas couldn't put their fingers on it. I only realized it after I joined another team and bought into 3710's culture, and then talked to my siblings who were still on 2056.

But there is an element of Magic to these teams as well. Legendary mentor / drive coach John VNeun once described what it takes to win Championships: it's all about preparation and practice, refinement and iteration, so that if and when you hit that streak of luck, you are able to run with it as far as possible. Sometimes, if you're lucky enough, you get that perfect alliance, and the right opponents are eliminated, and your strategies work, and you win. That is a magic I hope to experience every time I go to competition.

[hzheng_449]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

. There are many other competitions in which students do 100% of the work with limited mentor involvement, FRC is different.

...

The other has mentors working with students.

I think for the thread to have progress we need to agree on what "student-lead" means, because I do not think "student-lead" is even remotely close to "no mentors"

I believe that the defining factor of "student-lead" teams is that students ultimately have the responsibility to make executive decisions on a team. This does not preclude heavily involved mentors providing guidance and assistance, but it does mean that said mentors would ultimately defer to the students.

As was mentioned earlier in the thread, much of the bad blood regarding this debate comes from only considering one extreme. (And of course, the resulting backlash from teams that feel they are being unfairly characterized because of this extreme position... case in point my own post earlier ).

I don't think it's hard to accept that when someone says "student-run", they by no means mean "100% students 0% mentors". (And vice-versa) Neither extreme is healthy for a team, neither extreme is an accurate portrayal of 99.99% of teams, and neither view is constructive to furthering this discussion.

[RRLedford]

Yes, it is a mistake to focus mostly on the extremes, since there is really a full spectrum of different ways that the mentor-student responsibilities ultimately end up being defined, allocated, and carried out, in the process of completing a First Robotics season.

When participants (students, teachers or mentors) become upset, within this process, it will nearly always relate in some way to unfulfilled expectations, thwarted intentions, or undelivered communications (and/or combinations of all three).

As head mentor for nearly 6 years at a K-12 school that does both the FTC and and FRC programs, and launched our 2nd FTC team this year, I have seen the full range of how these upsets develop and play out.

The collection of intentions and expectations that student participants bring with them to the program varies considerably, and these are most often never really clearly communicated at the start of a season. Many times, as these student intentions and expectations start being seen (by them) as thwarted or at risk, the mentor(s') roll(s) will start to be examined and questioned.

For example, in this FTC season the sophomore team member majorities of both our FTC teams decided they would learn best if mentor involvement was kept at an absolute minimum - as in => "we'll call you when we need you."
For them, in their opinion, the mentors had become an impediment to their robotics learning process.

They indicated they would rather make their own decisions and choices, even if they proved to be wrong and their robots failed to perform as expected.

Needless to say, such an approach did not really turn out so well, and other more veteran team members considered it absurd, especially when the time window pressures for meeting robot build deadlines made this more trial & error approach (ending up heavy on the errors count) an extremely unworkable one.

The mentor group was also not so pleased to hear that their mentoring efforts could be assessed with such a negative view, by this many students, However, in the end the middle ground between the extremes of viewpoints was eventually found.

Still, it had to be acknowledged by the team mentors that, the mere success of getting a decent performing and, competition ready robot on the field, if that effort required too much hands on mentor involvement, then such an approach was not necessarily the kind of result with which all student team members would consider an equally satisfying for them way to run the program.

-Dick Ledford

[ZackAlfakir]

Originally Posted by Sam_Mills

If you have mentors on your team capable of teaching programming to the level that your students can do all of it, you're very lucky.

Sorry I haven't been following through with this thread due to build season, but as a Student, I actually teach all of the lower classmen how to program. As someone with 3 years of experience, I actually don't touch the robot code for the most part, and instead I help all of the other kids understand how to do their part.

From my experience, all you really need is dedication and determination. My Rule #1 for programming team is "All Day Errey Day" and they really believe that, and that is what makes our team sucessful.