Club vs Team Approach

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by DaveL

Does aiming to be a team and being more restrictive from the beginning help you compete and be able to deliver a more technical student education?

Originally Posted by Caleb Sykes

Just curious, what would the focus be on, if not constructing a robot?

Being in FIRST and putting the focus on the robot is like building a robot and putting the focus on the bandsaw (or mill or lathe, or whatever you do your machining with). The robot is a tool we use to play the game, the game is a tool we use to inspire and teach.

Even when we did not have so many applicants that we could not have them all in the spaces at one time, we were definitely on the "team" side of the balance. There are three main reasons for this:

• These days, STEM is all about working in teams. Anyone going into STEM who has not learned how to work as a team member is at a definite disadvantage.
• Our school's culture (and administration) is big on competition. Being a team rather than a club helps bring in new members, and definitely helps when the administration decides whether or not to support us with a parking lot for a practice area or a portable building for build space.
• Teams become "family", that is, learn to trust each other, far faster and usually deeper than clubs. Many of the kids we hope to inspire need to know what a family is supposed to be like. It's rather strange to think of FRC as an alternative to joining a gang, but there are a couple of cases where we may have made that big a difference in a life.

Our first three years, we never turned anyone away from the team, but we always set expectations, and awarded positions of leadership, responsibility, and prestige to those who deliver on those expectations. Team leadership is recognized and formalized, rather than elected. We have never held a truly democratic election on anything important; consensus is preferred, but when consensus fails, leadership determines the best course of action. The only time Jesse's decision on team leadership was overridden by the students was rather curious. The students as a strong consensus (next stage would have been pitchforks, torches, and power tools) told Jesse that Joey (his son) was definitely a team captain. He had dismissed Joey, afraid of nepotism complaints. After the intervention, all returned to "normal".

Last year and this year, we had more candidates than our spaces could hold, so we held "tryouts" to determine early who is willing to commit to the team. Our criteria are based on attitude, not aptitude, though we do get good aptitude data as a side effect which helps place team members in their respective roles. Our tryouts are intentionally sufficiently brutal that significantly more candidates "fail to complete tryouts" than are "not selected" from those who finish. Tryouts are not as brutal as build season; the idea is to let kids flake out earlier rather than later. These cuts helped our team form an espirit de corps much earlier than ever before. This year, it's even higher, even earlier.

Finally, a personal note. In high school, I was a member of quite a few "clubs" and "activities" including National Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta, yearbook, newspaper, and more, but the extracurricular I remember most was competing in "Academic Games". Even though we competed as individuals, the experience of training together and cheering each other on when one of us was in the "playoff rounds" made those people constitute most of those whom I would be looking for at a high school class reunion. I ended up carpooling to college (commuting to the University of New Orleans) with three AG team members who had graduated a year ahead of me. Teams matter in ways that clubs cannot.

[Caleb Sykes]

Originally Posted by gblake

Just taking a friendly shot in the dark here...

The focus could be on inspiring students and on changing/inspiring the community around the team.

I think it is unlikely that this is the OPs implicit alternative, although we will see if/when the OP replies.

I say it is unlikely because I have never met a team that is truly dedicated to inspiring students and changing their communities that acts like a club, maybe I just need to get out more. Every single "inspiring" team that I have met is just that, a team. For example, I highly doubt that almost any Chairman's winning teams would self-describe as a club.

My original question was posed because the OP is describing the club vs team choice in a way that is opposite of my personal experience. In my experience, FRC "teams" that I would describe as clubs focus almost exclusively on the robot.

[Chief Hedgehog]

Originally Posted by DaveL

Hi All:
I'm conflicted between a club vs a team approach to running an FRC team.
By club, I mean no tryouts, easy to join, right after school and focused on education. By team, I mean dues and build hours are required. Week night and weekend meetings. Plus the focus is on constructing a robot.

During the Fall we get a ton of students and run more like a club.
We get a low turnout on the weekends. It doesn't matter if its a general build day, a workshop or an outreach event.

In the winter we morph into more of a team and lose a large number of students, but the students that remain are more committed to attending meetings and building a robot.

Does aiming to be a team and being more restrictive from the beginning help you compete and be able to deliver a more technical student education?

I would like to learn if other teams have had these issues, how they improved and how they would rate themselves on a club / team dimension.

Dave

First off (and this goes to anyone interested) please pm me so we can discuss further how we have done things at Becker (FRC 4607 C.I.S.).

At Becker we decided early that we wanted the best and brightest students involved in our program. When we proposed FIRST to our school in the fall of 2012, they (school administration) wanted a year to discuss it. However, when we started to work with our (now) sponsors, they demanded that this opportunity happen immediately - regardless if the school was on board. The sponsors had a few other demands - but I can provide these in better detail in a PM.

So we went ahead with the idea that we would use my space (I am an Industrial Tech teacher) for this endeavor. We never thought of this as a club or a team - but as a program that will fulfill a need that Becker did not yet have. We wanted to create a program that brought in all of these great leaders to create a "team" that had many facets - facets that you could find in a lot of other programs (NHS, 4H, DECA, SuperMileage, Debate, SKILLS USA, Knowledge Bowl) but not in one area. The things that we stressed were leadership, public speaking, marketing, strategy, web design, engineering, fabrication, etc. We sought the approval for the space usage from my principal and she obliged.

When we started FRC 4607 we realized that without leaders, we would be doomed. If we just started this endeavor with robotics kids, we would be a robotics club. This was not our intent. We wanted to be relevant in Minnesota within five years. In fact, in the other coach's office he still hangs our first year's objective: To be in the top 50% of Minnesota FRC teams in five years.

Our next obstacle was to gain funding. The school would provide the space and nothing else - we were on our own. At the time we thought this was a program killer - little did we know that this was one of the keys to our success. When we presented our idea/team to the local industry they were amazed that the school did not jump on board - so they did. When the local industry started to climb on board, they were willing to provide money and the mentors to help us.

Three years later we are more than stable - and we are still growing. We started with 12 interested students and last season we had 51 students on our FRC team. Of those 51 students, all but 7 were apart of other organizations such as Soccer, Football, Trap, NHS, Basketball, Theater, Debate, Speech, Baseball, Yearbook, Track, LaCrosse, Tennis, Student Council, Band, Choir, and many others. All of these students understood that FRC is just a program - but one that can greatly influence who they are and what they can do after High School. In the last three years, we have graduated 38 students and all but three are now in a four year university studying a degree in the STEM spectrum. In fact, a handful started the Bison Robotics club at NDSU and are a part of the Ri3d team 'Greenhorns'.

I think that Becker has a great model for others to follow - allow your student leaders in the school to be a part of the FRC team while at the same time allow them to compete and/or be an integral part of other programs in their school. What they gain from both entities will strengthen their identity and make your team that much stronger.

Others can judge on where FRC 4607 is/has been in terms of team placement in Minnesota... but from what I have seen my students do in the last three years, I know we are a great success.

[JoshWilson]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

We straddle the line a bit. We're open to anyone being involved, and we're perfectly fine with someone that can only show up once a week. However, we have a ton of incentives to encourage increased participation (like travel requirements, lettering requirements), and almost all of our students work towards those incentives. Usually our fall program is attended less than build season, only because students are busy doing other activities (theater, cross country, soccer, and volleyball are some of the big ones, it seems).

Our team does the same thing, and it's worked pretty well so far. This is the setup I would recommend, and it's a great combination of the two.

[DaveL]

Hi All:
Thank you to everyone for your thoughtful replies. I plan to share your perspectives with the students and see if our approach can be improved.

Like many who commented about their students being involved with other activities, my team is no different. They are busy filling out college applications, working on a 2yr IB degree, attending a variety of clubs as well as participating on sports teams. As such, we mostly focus on training rookies in the fall.

According to the school we are a club. In the fall, we behave just like any other after school club. Then in January the magic happens. Our meetings switch to evening times, we collect dues and require a certain amount of build hours to travel with the team.

To the comments about doing both. We are, but it may not be the best approach for us.
We typically attract 40 new students in the fall, but only a small percentage end up attending the winter meetings on a regular basis.

Since the team wants to do better in the competition, I will approach them with your comments and see if a change in our procedures are in order.

Dave

[sanddrag]

This is a very interesting discussion, and something I've debated a time or two. I believe that to some degree, strongly competing with the desire to win and education can be mutually exclusive to some degree. The types and methods of learning take place differently whether the goal is to win the competition or the goal is simply to learn about robotics, and everything that comprises it. Why are these mutually exclusive in some ways? Time. On a rushed schedule, one is often sacrificed to gain the other. Is it to say that a that focuses solely on winning doesn't learn? No, of course they learn. But the types of things they learn are different, and certain types of students who cannot "keep up" may be left out of the process.

2015 and 2011 were probably some of the best years for learning. 2013 was probably the worst. I felt so burdened by the difficult challenge and new constraints in 2013 that we were under tremendous pressure just to get something decent together, and there was little time to slow anything down to actually teach anyone anything. During build season, the rigorous build schedule was just go go go everyday, and if you couldn't keep up, you got left out. It's not a nice way to run a team.

On 696, we made it very clear on the first meeting day for our 2015-16 team that our goal was to try to win in the competition, but not at any cost. We will not enter the competition simply to show up, and exhibit a mediocre entry. Anyone can do that. We want to put a lot into it, and get a lot out of it, while attempting to be a strong competitor, with a chance of winning. We realized that some teams do try to win at practically any cost, and we decided that model does not fit our team well. Contrary to popular belief, there is life outside of FIRST Robotics. This is not the only thing our students and mentors do in their lives. We still take great value in the learning that takes place, and have implemented an extensive Fall training schedule to prepare our team members with skills they need to be successful during the build season.

It's definitely a balance to strike.

[WynS]

Our team is a bit of both. It is technically a school club but we are more and more often telling students that we are really like a team. On a sports team, you wouldn't expect to perform well if you didn't show up to practices. The same goes with a robotics team. With that said, we like to keep the bar for entry fairly low because some of our best students probably would not have gotten in if we were too rigorous in our selection process - some of them kicked into gear during or after their first year.

The team aspect comes into play because realistically, the students don't get as much out of the program if they don't show up regularly and often drop out anyway. With that said, we don't restrict those who just come a little. We just try and set realistic expectations.

[1002FRC]

I agree that they don't need to be mutually exclusive.
However, everything you listed as being attributes of a "team" approach should exist in your organization.
You need funds, you need accountability, you need structure in order to function well - especially when you grow. Dues, applications, and contracts are all fine.
At the same time, if you show people that you're serious they'll want to join.