Mentors not wanting to stay

[abigailthefox]

Absolutely get more mentors. It's a hard job to take, but find dedicated parents/teachers, etc.
I saw this earlier in the thread, but if your school is willing to offer to pay your lead mentor(s) the same money they pay sports coaches, that should definitely incentivize it.
Also, (and I know this is probably against school policy, insert disclaimer here) we've had students in the past, typically seniors, stay and work without a mentor. I'm not saying you should do this, but if it's a few days before bag and you're desperate...
You should always have someone 18+ around, as well as someone who understands safety procedures for all tools/equipment. I'm assuming your team captain has access to emergency contact information (if they don't, they should anyways), and if you have that around, you should be good.
By all means, recruiting mentors is your best bet, try reaching out to engineers/software people in your community, chances are if they have a genuine interest in these things (even if it's not their day job), they'll be more likely to want to help, and potentially even willing to put in the long, grueling hours.

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

I am personally a very busy person and it is possible that a personal crisis for me could have a global economic impact.

Then for the sake of my 401k, stop posting on Chiefdelphi & get back to work!!!

I will echo every other mentor's comments -- it gets much more difficult to mentor as you get older. When I was a student, I wanted to meet every possible minute of every day. As an adult, you have to balance many other commitments. As others have said, the best way to make your mentors stick around is A) get more mentors & B) use every minute you've got productively.

[JStein]

"Spheres of Influence". Control what is in your control (your actions, how you spend your time), influence what you can influence (encourage others to work hard, spend time wisely, stay longer hours), and try not to worry about the things for which you have neither control nor influence! This may seem obvious, but frequently time is wasted worrying/complaining about things that are outside of our control while things that could have materially improved a situation are neglected.

As a side note, if the team you're part of isn't a good fit for your goals and you have no options to change the situation, it may be time to look for a different team.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis

Then for the sake of my 401k, stop posting on Chiefdelphi & get back to work!!!

I will echo every other mentor's comments -- it gets much more difficult to mentor as you get older. When I was a student, I wanted to meet every possible minute of every day. As an adult, you have to balance many other commitments. As others have said, the best way to make your mentors stick around is A) get more mentors & B) use every minute you've got productively.

What 401k

I can't access just your 401k. No if my folks screw up we just take it all out.
So nothing personal.

What that doesn't make it any better?....hmm.

Just for the record - notice when I wrote that previous post.

[MechEng83]

Originally Posted by JStein

As a side note, if the team you're part of isn't a good fit for your goals and you have no options to change the situation, it may be time to look for a different team.

This is no small feat, btw. Many school-based teams are limited to students from within the district.

[techhelpbb]

Originally Posted by MechEng83

This is no small feat, btw. Many school-based teams are limited to students from within the district.

It's also a resource issue right? There's a great big difference between the resources at a veteran FRC11 and a lot of new teams.

That was why I decided to decouple that issue by building my own parallel unaffiliated programming (robot hardware) and CNC resources from FRC11/193.

This way if teams in general need help there's no conflict of interest.
For example when I offer this.

It's not terribly appropriate to offer without discourse with FRC11/193 their resources, so I offer only mine and my time.
There was a time I couldn't afford this process because I don't derive my income from this (I used to perform manufacturing it's more a hobby now) but increasingly it's not an issue.
This way the costs and impacts of my decisions are not visited upon them without agreement.

[DaneeR]

Definitely ask parents. I am a mentor and I train horses for a living. I don't know a darn thing about robots (well, I didn't- I'm learning fast!) But I do understand passion and drive. I know how to run for snacks. I have come in handy at surprising times- I used to give riding lessons to the woman who is an owner at Kline Brothers, where we sent CAD designs for them to manufacture for us. I have not had to call in any favors yet, but I can and will. So let parents know they will be more useful then they think! We have 3 'real' mentors. Then there is me and another parent (he does taxes). If your mentors only had to be there one at a time, and there were one or two parents each night, maybe your mentors could stay longer and then take a day off.

[Donut]

Originally Posted by michael5402

I know it is hard on three of them but they knew what they signed up for.

Originally Posted by BrendanB

What did they sign up for?

This is probably something you want to understand first. Your mentors signed up to help inspire students through designing and building a robot. They did not sign up to spend x number of hours in the shop. They (likely) did not sign up to build a robot that is going to seed in the top 8 at a competition. This is especially true if you have newer mentors who have not done this before, every new teacher or mentor I have worked with has said "I didn't know this is what I was getting into" at some point during the first season.

Let me highlight some of my experiences and advice based on my time in FRC. I was a highly invested student for 4 years and now a mentor for 9 years with three different teams that have had different levels of mentor resources and approaches to work time.

On 498 we spent me as many hours as possible at the school to work on the robot, typically working 4-7 most weekdays and 8 - 4 on Saturdays. Schedules went longer the closer we got to end of build with some late nights and occasionally meeting on a Sunday as well. We had an abundance of mentors to work with students (sometimes a 1:1 ratio) but most could not arrive until 5 or 6 on weekdays. We were a fairly competitive team, always making eliminations, sometimes as a captain, but never winning an event. At the time I was a student I thought our meeting schedule was the only way to be competitive but in hindsight there was a lot of waste. Very little work happened from 4 until mentors arrived and if the mentor for your subteam couldn't come that day effectively no work happened. There was also not a sense of urgency much of the time because we knew we had time to work still. We never suffered much from mentor burnout (surprisingly) but we had a difficult time keeping teachers from the school (6 teacher leads in a 7 year span) at least partially because of the hours. We tried to have other teachers watch the team (babysit as some have mentioned) to help with the load but invariably the load falls on the lead teacher or two when the teams wants to start staying really late.

When I joined 167 I found out they "only" met three days a week most of build season; Tuesday and Thursday from about 5 - 8 and Saturday from 11 - 5. I thought it wasn't nearly enough time when I first heard it but after going through a few seasons of it it was pretty effective. Since there weren't as many meetings more mentors and students could make the ones there were and they were more effective as a result. We were also more focused on building when we were there, and tasks like buying parts and sketching out ideas usually occurred outside of meetings with meeting time only for final approval. As we became more competitive we tended to add a fourth meeting on Friday or Sunday in the last 2 or 3 weeks of build season and worked President's day but still stuck to avoiding meeting on every day. We did not have as many mentors as were on my previous team but still had 5-6 who regularly went to meetings each season and our lead engineering mentor was approved to open our build space without a teacher present. Our competitive level was about the same, we made eliminations at every event we were at and we were an alliance captain once in 2014.

I am the lead mentor now for 2662. We meet on a very low hour schedule, Tuesday and Thursday from 3 - 4:30 or 5 and Saturday from 8 - 2. We also meet for 10 to 12 hours on President's day and try to get in about 5 hours on MLK day. Outside of that we may get to add a Friday or Monday in the last week (still 3 - 4:30) but that is it. We have three mentors, I am the only engineering mentor and then there are two teachers at the school who help run the team. We have to meet on such a short basis out of necessity, not choice. Our teacher mentors both have young children and need to leave by 5 because of daycare or a spouse's job, and I cannot stay with the team if a teacher is not there. The majority of our students have to leave by 4 to catch buses since we accept students from a fairly wide geographic area, and many of our students live 20+ minutes away by car and do not have transportation home if they miss the bus. The build times for us do effect our competitiveness as we have difficulty finishing a basic robot in the time period we have (we missed elims and finished 15th at our regional last year, but largely due to strategy not scoring ability). However number of mentors has as big or a bigger impact overall. We still often have students who aren't working for part of meetings because they don't know how to do a task or don't know that a task needs to be done, and we have few mentors or experienced students to lead them.

Based on my experiences I think that meeting 3-4 days a week (3 - 4 hours weekdays and 6 - 8 hours on weekends) with extra time on holidays is the sweet spot for a team to be competitive and sustainable. Meeting more than this tends to burn out anyone who tries to attend all meetings and if you don't have an ample supply of mentors available then any extra time without enough mentors (or very experienced students) is usually not valuable. Highly competitive teams with ample mentor support or students who are skilled enough to effectively act as mentors are the exception, but that is not the majority of teams, and even then they can benefit from keeping their schedule "reasonable" to improve the long term sustainability and health of the team. I also think that getting approval for mentors who are not teachers to supervise the team at their build space is extremely helpful if it can be done; otherwise you need to have multiple teachers who can watch the team to hold an effective schedule.

TLDR; the problem is not mentors not being committed enough, the problem is not enough mentors/teachers. It is difficult to meet on a frequent enough basis to build a competitive robot if there are only 1 - 3 mentors on a team, and existing build time is likely not as productive as it could be due to the small quantity of mentors.

[jweston]

Originally Posted by michael5402

I know they have a busy schedules and they have family. Its not like we have asked them to stay late all six weeks. It has just been the last couple days and for all of them not to be there on bag day and not wanting to stay late on day up set some of the member on the team. The fact that we only needed one part ,which broke that day, to be finished and they would not let us go get the part mad us a little mad. We are only a 15 minute drive from andy mark and could have easily got the part and fixed the robot. I personally and on the drive team and we have had hardly any practice time. We did go to a week zero event but left fairly early because we had some major problems. I was on the drive team last year and las year we had a different mentor who always stayed late and two keep in mine two of our mentors are teachers and the other is a retired electrical, so having practice around there work schedule is not a problem.

I've mentored every single day this build season, including 19.5 hrs from Sunday to bag alone. Mentors do this because they care a ton about the students and love robotics almost as much. But they do have other things in their lives that take them away.

Having three mentors covering 6 weeks of build is asking a great deal of them. Please don't presume to know what goes on in the lives of any of your mentors, regardless of who they are. I'm sure they miss the time with the team as long as they feel like the students are engaged. It's critical to the success of a team to get as many supportive mentors as you can, both engineering and non-engineering. Even the most dedicated mentor can be overwhelmed or burn out when stretched too thin.

I recommend talking to your mentors about trying recruiting additional mentors. Please bear in mind that the students should be doing a fair amount of the legwork, but it definitely needs to be done in cooridination with your current mentors. Good options are parents (especially for non-engineering tasks) or local professional engineering societies (ASME, IEEE, SWE, NSBE, ACM, Alpha Pi Mu, Pi Tau Sigma, Tau Beta Pi, etc.). If you're lucky, perhaps one of your sponsors has an employee volunteer program.

[indieFan]

Originally Posted by michael5402

One of our biggest problems this year is our mentors not wanting to stay and letting us work on the robot. We have had several times where we asked them to stay later and we are told we are done when they want to go home. We only have three mentors and two of them rotate days to watch us. We have all so had days where we did not have school, not weather related, and we asked them to come in and they wouldn't. We currently have the robot in the bag not completed that we bagged around 6 o'clock yesterday because they did not want to stay later. Several people on our team feel like they are there to just baby sit us. Any time we have tried to talk to them it seems like the response always is you will do what I say and usually is in a raised tone of voice.

I was just wondering if any other teams have had problems with there mentors and them wanting to stay. I know it is hard on three of them but they knew what they signed up for.

A few comments:
1. You talk about mentors and not being able to build if they are not present. You do not mention a teacher/school personnel being present. Many school districts will not allow people on campus without a teacher/school personnel there for liability reasons.

2. You say that "they knew what they signed up for." That is correct, but do YOU know what THEY signed up for? The team's expectations are clearly different from the mentors' expectations. This requires level setting.

3. From the perspective of a mentor who is single:

• I do not have anyone to help me around my apartment with cleaning, dishes, laundry, cooking, etc. This has been sacrificed for the last 6 weeks.
  I do not have anyone to go home to, so any chance of working on a social life is sacrificed for 6 weeks.
  I do not have extra time to go to fun classes, like cooking, on weekends because of the time sacrifices I have made for the last 6 weeks for my team, plus competition weekends.
  I do not have a cat that understands why she doesn't get fed between 4:30 and 6pm everyday because of the sacrifices I have made for the last 6 weeks.
  I have not always gotten decent parking at my apartment complex due to a lack of assigned space due to the sacrifices I have made for the last 6 weeks.
  I have gotten to work late or worked fewer than 8 hours a day due to the sacrifices I have made for the last 6 weeks.
  I have NOT gotten the required amount of sleep I require because of the sacrifices I have made for the last 6 weeks. This affects my emotional well being, as well as my physical well being.

Note that the above list is by MY OWN CHOICE. I could have gone in and worked with my team for 1 hour a week, and they would have been grateful for that time. That is not MY expectation of working with a team.

The ONLY thing I would change about my team at this time is getting them to write everything down on paper instead of taking photos of white boards or doing calculations using Google. When something goes wrong, there's no way to figure it out if it's not in writing. There are also issues if someone isn't present and is the only person that knows what is happening.

On the flip side, I have gotten to watch one student find that she LOVES to tap threads into metal as it's rather relaxing. I have also gotten to watch when lightbulbs go on over other students' heads. THIS is a big reason why I volunteer, to watch the students grow and gain knowledge, either educational or personal.

[2544HCRC]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

Someone UNDERSTANDS!!!

Couldn't have said it better.

Might I add that mentors are usually as committed as the team. There are some days when I want to shut things down early because I am babysitting and students are not being productive. I generally don't, but I have in the past sent the team home because it was a big party on my time. I love being a mentor, but you have to know I really don't want to just "hang out" with a bunch of high school kids.

[Foster]

Originally Posted by michael5402

...
comments about mentors not staying ...
<snip>

I'm happy to proofread your Woodie Flowers submission about the one mentor that really did a great job and should be noticed.

I'm sure all 3000+ teams made a submission, right?

[Josh Drake]

I've been on a team where the teacher was given a stipend and told to run the program. They were told it was a turn key operation and that they wouldn't need to do much.
They soon realized how much work was involved. That teacher had no real interest in the program and it showed, so I can see where you are coming from. The teachers are probably the only way to unlock the facility and allow access. If they aren't into the FRC challenge it makes it difficult because they have final say from the school stand point and you feel your hands are tied.
Some teams have that dedicated teacher that is in it for the right reasons. I love those guys and really appreciate all they do. Ms. Kvale on 3494 comes to mind.
Unfortunately people come and go on a team from year to year. There are teams out there that would love to have more students, more mentors, more school district buy in and definitely more resources. Seems like most teams lack in one area or another.

I applaud your enthusiasm as a student that really wants to make the best robot possible and is willing to put in the time. It sucks having a key member of the team leave and change the dynamics of the team. Hang in there, use the 6 hour unbag time wisely if possible and lean on the veterans in the area if you can.