Getting Mentors out of Comfort zone

[nlknauss]

Experienced mentors are huge assets to any FRC team, but student ideas fuel team investment and success. FIRST students are constantly in brainstorming mode and asking questions in order to better themselves and their team. Mentors do need to help students evaluate their ideas in a logical manner, it is a part of FIRST learning. Our team built 3 different elevator lifts this build season before making a final decision on the one that would ultimately be used. Through each iteration, the students asked if we could do it and together we weighed resources like time, money, weight, and the intended function before deciding to move forward. Getting mentors to ask students these questions (or any) can be tough, especially when a mentor knows what the answer will be before asking the student the question. The students may provide an answer the mentor didn't consider. Remembering to ask questions may be enough to rejuvenate the way mentors work with students.

Nate

[GreyingJay]

^ This.

I've been in many meetings -- FRC teams, summer camp committees, work -- that look like this:

Leader A: Let's brainstorm. All ideas are welcome!
Students: *give out multiple ideas*
Leader B: No, those won't work. I really think we should do X.
Students: *variety of pros and cons of multiple ideas*
Leader B: No, no, trust me, we should do X.
Students: *maybe a variation of X, but include Y?*
Leader B: No, it's really got to be X, guys.
Students: I thought you said all ideas were welcome?

Leader B might be brilliant -- she might even be absolutely right -- but this is not the way to foster inspiration and innovation amongst students.

[ASmith1675]

The biggest challenge of being a mentor is allowing some of your ideas to take a backseat and allowing students the chance to wrestle with the challenges set forth in a given game.

I agree with the notion that simply saying "No that won't work" is not the way to inspire and educate. When I think something may not work in a discussion, I instead like to ask questions to spur further thinking about overcoming an issue that I can see with the suggestion. Ex. "Have you thought about Y?" "How would would overcome X?" What I hope this does is allows students to be able to see what my years of experience building robots have taught me.

Often times these types of questions will lead to better ideas from both mentors and students. Mentors will shed some of their inherent biases, and students will gain a greater understanding of some of the details that need to be worked out.


In terms of trying to get mentors to change their biases, proof is your best option. The biggest issue with changing a drivetrain is that it is often (nearly always) the most critical system of a robot. A fantastic mechanism may mean nothing if you can't easily maneuver around the field. Developing a new drivetrain would be a great offseason project. This allows iteration away from the time pressures of the 6-week build (nothing ever goes as smoothly as you'd like). Then during build season you have another tool in your design toolbox that you can use to accomplish the game task.

[M3NT0R]

I'm going to hijack the thread a little bit.

I'm the lead mentor for a second year team, and when we were rookies I was the only mentor. While I'm very passionate about FIRST, I quickly realized that running a team with 1 mentor is certainly a recipe for not good things.

I was successfully able to get 2 new mentors but have unable to been get them to come consistently, and this year has again ended up being somewhat a 1 mentor team. Being a larger team with more resources, I end up being a severe bottleneck as major design decisions generally involve a mentor, and I'm the only one around.

I was hoping by being very relaxed and nonchalant about it would create an environment of interest to the mentors and they would come more often but that definitely backfired.

How can I get these mentors to come out more or be more involved? I'm worried that bringing this up will me lose the once a week they show up during build season.

Side-note, any tips for cold recruiting mentors. I don't have good connections with local companies or industries.

[Hot_Copper_Frog]

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

While I'm very passionate about FIRST, I quickly realized that running a team with 1 mentor is certainly a recipe for not good things.

Yes, I'd agree with that. 1 mentor is generally not enough to accomplish more than the bare minimum of what needs to be done administratively, especially if you are not dedicating 40+ hours/week to the team.

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

I was successfully able to get 2 new mentors but have unable to been get them to come consistently, and this year has again ended up being somewhat a 1 mentor team. Being a larger team with more resources, I end up being a severe bottleneck as major design decisions generally involve a mentor, and I'm the only one around.

How did you recruit these two new mentors? Do they have FIRST/FRC experience outside of this year? Were they made aware of what sort of time commitment and responsibilities would be expected of them? Are these mentors capable (read: trained/experienced in engineering design/electrical design/programming/CAD) of making major design decisions?

Sometimes when adults are recruited to a FRC team, they don't really understand what that entails. Nobody sat them down and explained that FIRST, while incredibly rewarding, will suck most of the free time out of your life for approximately 4-6 months of the year. A lot of adults simply don't have the time or free mental/emotional energy to deal with that but want to help anyway.

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

I was hoping by being very relaxed and nonchalant about it would create an environment of interest to the mentors and they would come more often but that definitely backfired.

I can see why you would feel this way, and from your perspective it makes sense. But your nonchalant attitude probably communicated that it was okay to be nonchalant and relaxed about commitment and adhering to a team structure. If you don't make expectations crystal clear, then in all likelihood you will be met with inconsistent attendance.

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

How can I get these mentors to come out more or be more involved? I'm worried that bringing this up will me lose the once a week they show up during build season.

You need to assign roles and responsibilities. These work best if they have nothing to do with the current people involved -- for example, it would be ideal to have a Team Leader, a Chief Engineer, a Chief of Business Operations, and a Chief of Public Relations, depending on the goals of your team.

Chief Engineer oversees all robot production/design/documentation. Chief of Business Operations oversees financial management and budgeting, administrative matters, food and event scheduling, etc. Chief of Public Relations handles community outreach, team documentation, Woodie Flowers submission, Business Plan submission, Chairman's submission, Animation submission, etc. Ideally, each of these positions would have at least one or two other mentors to help divide tasks.

By having a built in leadership structure at the mentor level, you can assign expectations to each position, and make sure that the position is filled by somebody every season. This way, they know what they're responsible for and it doesn't turn into a personal attack on their commitment to the team. It's much easier to say "Steve, as Chief Engineer you are expected to be present at least four days/week during the build season" than "Steve, you really need to show up more because I can't do all of this by myself!!!".

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

Side-note, any tips for cold recruiting mentors. I don't have good connections with local companies or industries.

You may not have connections, but guess who does? The parents of your students. Holding a parent meeting and asking them to help you brainstorm can be really helpful. Some of them may even volunteer to fill specific mentorship roles for the year, or know a co-worker who would love to get involved.

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

I'm going to hijack the thread a little bit.
any tips for cold recruiting mentors. I don't have good connections with local companies or industries.

I'm sympathetic to your quest. We did pretty well this year recruiting mentors for our rookie team so I'll offer what worked for us:

• Borrow from an existing FRC team (thank you 4039)
• Check your local college for FRC alumns - there may even be an FRC club, or your local FIRST org can help locate alumns. Students have the most time and energy to spare
• Ask all of the shop / science / tech teachers in your school or neighbouring schools / colleges. Some of them may already be involved in student competitions, and may be willing to switch / merge
• Put a letter out to your state Professional Engineers association - Retirees are the best if you can find some
• If there's a "hacker space" in your community, visit and ask around. Maybe prepare a "pitch" ahead of time, or invite people to coffee and youtube.
• As Megan mentioned - parents! Kids who are interested in robotics often have parents who are interested in robotics. Even if they don't have the technical background, they are usually motivated to help their kids team succeed. In both teams I've mentored, we've had really active "Parent Groups" who took care of things like build season food, hotel reservations, carpooling etc. They were a huge help!

The harder part of your question is getting mentors to come often. FRC Build season is a frankly unreasonable amount of time to commit, especially if your mentors have full time jobs and/or families. The best solution, if you can't find anyone else crazy enough to lead, is to recruit as many "part timers" as you can. Try to get everyone to commit to some minimum amount of attendance / responsibility during the off season, and then plan your meetings / team ambitions to suit.

Good luck!

[nuclearnerd]

Oh, one other thing that helped a lot - get your mentors and student leads signed up on some kind of online collaboration tool. We used www.basecamp.com (which is free for teachers, and well worth the monthly rate for the rest of us). You would be surprised at the amount of organization & decision making that can be done outside of the meeting context when people are free to contribute on their own schedules.

[Jon Stratis]

One thing we've done in the past - having design discussions, strategy discussions, and prototyping as a group is awesome. It lets the mentors provide feedback based on their (hopefully) vast experience, and helps introduce newer students 539 more concepts. But in the end, a decision has to be made. If the mentors are dominating the decision making process, try getting them to step back. Get the team together after school before the mentors show up, make a bunch of decisions on what you want to build, and present it as a comprehensive design to the mentors. Show them you put in a lot of thought and that the team is United behind the design. And then ask them for help in achieving that design.

In my opinion, avoiding something just because the team has never done it before is silly. If there are other good reasons to avoid a particular design, then those reasons should be clearly listed for everyone to understand.

[M3NT0R]

Originally Posted by Hot_Copper_Frog

How did you recruit these two new mentors?

They both found me, referred through other people. They were both actively seeking to mentor FIRST teams.

Do they have FIRST/FRC experience outside of this year?

They are both alumni

Were they made aware of what sort of time commitment and responsibilities would be expected of them?

Probably not as clearly as I should have. They are on distribution lists, and the schedule is circulated to them as often as it is to parents and students, which was generally bi-weekly.

Are these mentors capable (read: trained/experienced in engineering design/electrical design/programming/CAD) of making major design decisions?

Seeing as I don't consider myself highly capable, I would say they are equivalently if not more capable, at least when it comes to mechanical design. I'm fairly competent and can definitely handle programming myself. Well...at least I perceive them to be capable, I don't have any proof but just based on their backgrounds.

A lot of adults simply don't have the time or free mental/emotional energy to deal with that but want to help anyway.

I think this is what exactly what I'm dealing with. People that want to help but can't. The solution to my problem lies to how to convince or get these adults to help.

If you don't make expectations crystal clear, then in all likelihood you will be met with inconsistent attendance.

Fair enough...but I don't want to scare them off....

You need to assign roles and responsibilities.

I think this combined with the above may help. Thinking about it, I jump into the meeting and after an initial team meeting, run off to help whatever student, and this leaves the other mentors to kind of pick-up..whatever. I guess it's easier for me to jump in, and not as easy for them. So...I think we've come a bit full circle with OP. How can I get these mentors to get out of their shell? Maybe having them and I work together with a group of students, so they can feed off of whatever I'm doing?

You may not have connections, but guess who does? The parents of your students.

This is a fantastic idea. Unfortunately, all my parent meetings have turned up a wee-bit empty (about 20% of parents show up). A very different socioeconomic background than what I'm used to (inner-city, public school).

Originally Posted by nuclearnerd

[*]Borrow from an existing FRC team (thank you 4039)

How did this work out? Were mentors actually willing to go to two different teams during build season?

[*]Check your local college for FRC alumns - there may even be an FRC club, or your local FIRST org can help locate alumns. Students have the most time and energy to spare

I was thinking the same thing after posting this. However, I'm a bit wary of overcommitting a college student. I would be for this if we had a solid group of mentors and were looking for additional part-time mentors, but I don't know about asking a college student to be a full-time mentor. I think very few would be willing/capable. And at a young age sometimes you think you can do more than you can take on....case and point, me running this team solo right now.

[*]Ask all of the shop / science / tech teachers in your school or neighbouring schools / colleges. Some of them may already be involved in student competitions, and may be willing to switch / merge

The tech teacher at the school mentors two FTC team, the other tech and math teacher mentor FLL teams. It's been tough to ask them to meet with the FRC team.

[*]Put a letter out to your state Professional Engineers association - Retirees are the best if you can find some

This is a good idea....a really good idea. Thank you.

[*]If there's a "hacker space" in your community, visit and ask around. Maybe prepare a "pitch" ahead of time, or invite people to coffee and youtube.

another good idea. It would also be a good opportunity for our team to "demo" and I can try to get some mentors out of it.

[*]As Megan mentioned - parents!

My team had a huge parent group as well, but I think it's the different socioeconomic environment. I've sent several e-mails to get food organized etc, but nothing ends up happening, and I can't leave kids hungry during meetings so I end up doing it myself. Do you have any tips on how to incentivize parents?

The harder part of your question is getting mentors to come often....is to recruit as many "part timers" as you can. Try to get everyone to commit to some minimum amount of attendance / responsibility

I think Megan's point about structure will enable this to be a reality. It's hard to be a part timer if you don't see a specific part of the team to work on.


Thank you guys so much. My takeaways:

More dedication from mentors

• Organize your team and mentors - have expectations for different mentor roles

Finding new mentors:

• Professional Engineers Association
• Hackerspace

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

I think this is what exactly what I'm dealing with. People that want to help but can't. The solution to my problem lies to how to convince or get these adults to help.

If people are resistant to helping because of time commitment, try to find smaller chunks of work that they can be responsible for. Of course you need more mentors to share the load.

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

I think this combined with the above may help. Thinking about it, I jump into the meeting and after an initial team meeting, run off to help whatever student, and this leaves the other mentors to kind of pick-up..whatever. I guess it's easier for me to jump in, and not as easy for them. So...I think we've come a bit full circle with OP. How can I get these mentors to get out of their shell? Maybe having them and I work together with a group of students, so they can feed off of whatever I'm doing?

If you have enough people you can have one person who is "in charge" and other people who hover around helping students wherever they can. When I started mentoring I was introduced to the software team and initially I felt a bit useless since I had never been exposed to any of the team's code or any of the wpilib stuff. It ended up being a good fit that I mentored a ninth grader who was new to the team and new to programming in general. The lead software mentor would say "figure out X" and we would learn together how to do it.

[M3NT0R]

Originally Posted by GreyingJay

The lead software mentor would say "figure out X" and we would learn together how to do it.

So how was that experience? Since you were new, were you freaked out about mentoring a student? I've somewhat done this before, but I wonder if I need to be there with both the new mentor and the student to make the mentor feel comfortable.

[Skyehawk]

I'm going to pull this thread back towards it's intended propose.

As a student from 2011-2014 on team 876; it was a real bummer when so many ideas of mine (and fellow teammates) got shot down, I always told myself that It would get better, as I got older that I would gain a higher degree of respect and recognition. While this was partially true, as in our mentor-centric team would actually hear my ideas out (and pay attention for that matter (2012 was a bad year)). My ideas never made it past the prototypes that I made. This was also true as far as programming went, every year- bare bones programming. Things eventually picked up in 2013-2014 as I stopped asking and just did.

My point being that students really never had a large say in what the robot would end up being. We don't do CAD, we only have vague ideas on what the robot will be, it's mostly build on the fly. Our lead building mentor has yet to build us a bad robot, but things are mostly done his way (not entirely, but mostly). There are plenty of times I wanted to try swerve, mecanum or slide, but I got shot down because "that's not how we do things" or "there has never been a mecanum bot on Einstein".

Now that I am a mentor I have caught myself exhibiting some of this "less desirable" behavior, don' t get me wrong, experience is good, but it is true that you learn more from failure than when you are handed success. I am now trying to port my projects over to students instead of trying to continue them myself (as much as I want to), and let them continue development of the ideas with my guiding input.

When it gets down to it: The best way out of this, in my honest opinion, is for the students to approach said mentor(s) as a group, explain the situation, and offer ideas to fix the problem. The solution may just be as easy as bringing it out into the open. Past that, work on mechanism that you brought up during the build season and impalement them onto the bot after the season, or a programming method, etc. If it works better than the previous solution the mentor(s) may see that your reasoning was right in the first place and be more open to ideas. If it doesn't work better, you just learned what not to do in that situation, no harm done.

I wish you luck,
-Skye

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

So how was that experience? Since you were new, were you freaked out about mentoring a student? I've somewhat done this before, but I wonder if I need to be there with both the new mentor and the student to make the mentor feel comfortable.

I settled into it very easily, but though I am new to FRC mentoring I do have tons of experience working with teenagers through another organization I volunteer with, a summer camp.

I would say that if your new mentor is comfortable working with and communicating with teenagers, and humble enough to be able to say to a student "You know, I don't actually know the answer, let's find out together", then it should be fine. That's literally what we would do. We'd find stuff on wpilib or Google searches. Having experience with Java, I picked up on things a little quicker than he did and I was able to explain basic concepts as we went along. I don't think I was ever more than a step or two ahead of him but it was enough to get us both up to speed quickly.

I count it as one of my "wins" that, on bag and tag day, at 11:30pm, we needed to test one last thing before we bagged the robot, and he was able to write the program we needed from scratch, under time pressure from everyone on the team. That was a proud moment for both of us!

This setup also allowed the lead software mentor to focus his attention on several of the more experienced programmers, making his job easier too. A third mentor focused on other aspects of the code and worked directly with two students. I guess we essentially split the group so each mentor focused on 1-3 students for the entire time. I think this worked well.

[nuclearnerd]

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

How did this work out? Were mentors actually willing to go to two different teams during build season?

The details are a bit complicated to sum up in one line, but in short MakeShift made it a priority to support a rookie team, so they asked several of their mentors to work for 5406 instead. It was a tough choice to make! Giving up mentors made it harder for 4039, and going from an established team to a rookie team was hard for us, but it was a very "GP" thing to do.

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

I was thinking the same thing after posting this. However, I'm a bit wary of overcommitting a college student. I would be for this if we had a solid group of mentors and were looking for additional part-time mentors, but I don't know about asking a college student to be a full-time mentor. I think very few would be willing/capable. And at a young age sometimes you think you can do more than you can take on....case and point, me running this team solo right now.

Are you kidding, our college students are some of our most valuable mentors! Ours have all been through FRC before, and know the drill. They've got flexible schedules, a huge energy reserve, and really good repor with the students (who are only a few years younger). We tell them not to prioritize the robot over their school, but otherwise leave it to them to balance their academic commitments.

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

The tech teacher at the school mentors two FTC team, the other tech and math teacher mentor FLL teams. It's been tough to ask them to meet with the FRC team.

Keep up the soft push. Maybe the tech teacher would like to graduate from FTC to the big bots?

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

This is a good idea....a really good idea. Thank you.
another good idea. It would also be a good opportunity for our team to "demo" and I can try to get some mentors out of it.

My pleasure!

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

My team had a huge parent group as well, but I think it's the different socioeconomic environment. I've sent several e-mails to get food organized etc, but nothing ends up happening, and I can't leave kids hungry during meetings so I end up doing it myself. Do you have any tips on how to incentivize parents?

We might be lucky to have some better off parents. Our group started off slow - we hosted a couple of "mandatory parent meetings", and forced a build season dinner signup sheet around Things changed pretty quickly though. The excitement of competition, and the influence of a couple of *really* eager parents has given everyone a boost. They've been organizing meals for the team on their own lately, and it's awesome!

The most important thing I can suggest is to keep parents in the loop about the team progress, and to treat them as team members. Host mandatory parent meetings. Send out a newsletter at least weekly. Get them signed up to Basecamp. Talk to the NEMO group for more ideas: http://www.firstnemo.org/

Originally Posted by M3NT0R

I think Megan's point about structure will enable this to be a reality. It's hard to be a part timer if you don't see a specific part of the team to work on.

Yep. I know it's super hard to "mentor the mentors", but not everyone has the abilities or interest to figure out how to contribute on their own. You have to structure the team and the work so that everyone has a bit of ownership. It pays to do your homework. Come up with some work plans before each meeting. Review each plan with the mentors / student leaders at the beginning of each meeting so that afterwards they feel confident to grab a couple of students and go work independently. Be available yourself to answer questions as they come up, and to monitor everyone's progress. A quick debrief after each meeting is also super useful for adjusting the next meeting plan.

Good luck! PM me if I can help further.