Advice for transition from student to mentor, too involved?

[rich2202]

IMHO: Building the Programming the robot is where Students should have a primary role, and Mentors should have a supervisory role.

Everything else, is whatever works for the team. For instance, We have all day Saturday meetings during build season. The parents make the lunch for the team. If Students should do everything, then they should make the lunch too.

To me, Scouting is very important, but if the Student's don't want to do it, then having a Mentor do it is fine.

In your case, you saw a hole (students not doing it), and filled the need. You mentioned: "very little interaction from the students (even tough I offered)." Did you "offer" or "recruit"? I can see during Build Season that everyone wants to be on the robot, and not doing other stuff.

Now that Build Season is over, Students have time to do other stuff, hence the interest in Scouting. You seem to be the Scouting Mentor, and it would be appropriate for you to now Supervise the effort.

I would tell the Students: Just like you would not redesign the robot for Champs, now is not the time to redesign the scouting system. You won't have the opportunity to test it in action before Champs. The system worked for the 2nd event, and they are free to improve it for Champs.

I don't think that would be "stepping on the student's toes". I think it is more giving them parameters for what they can do between now and Champs. If they want to design a whole new system and test it at a regional/district, then let them have at it. Short of that, it is not unreasonable to tell them they are stuck with what has been used. Improvements are fine. Redesign is not.

If you get guff from the Senior Mentors, ask them: If the students were trying to do something similar with the robot, would you let them do it? If not, then why isn't that "stepping on the Student's toes"?

Note: Going from Student to Mentor is similar to going from a worker to a manager. Your role now is to get the workers to do the work, and you step back and supervise/guide the activity.