Hardest personal lesson learned?

[marshall]

The hardest personal lesson I learned this season...

I've never wanted to be a teacher. Both of my parents were teachers. They weren't miserable and both enjoyed what they did but I never wanted to be a teacher. I still don't want to be a teacher. To be clear, I have tons of respect for teachers and I think the world of anyone who gives up what they do. I just don't want to be one.

This was the year I learned that I am one. It turns out mentors are teachers. Oops.

What's more aggravating to me is that this is the year that I finally learned what I want to teach my students. I don't actually want to teach them about science or math. I don't care if they learn engineering skills from me. I learned this year that the thing I want to teach is almost impossible to teach someone. I want my students to learn passion. I want them to care so much about what they are doing that they infect other people with it... be that FRC or anything else.

So yeah... that's been an eye-opener for me this year.

[Collin4564]

The hardest thing I learned this season is that things don't always go your way.

Our team this year was incredible and we built a very high-quality robot. I felt great about our performance as we placed very highly at our events preceding championships. While we were one of the best robots at our events we didn't win and only were finalists at one of our three events.

I hoped to go to championships and do fairly well. Unfortunately during our last match in semifinals, we lost communication and drove onto the alliance wall. This was an extremely unlucky way to lose a match that we were predicted to win. One of our seniors was very upset because he couldn't do anything in his last match driving. We also had some tough luck with refereeing, but in the end, we built a great robot and had lots of fun as a team. I learned that sometimes things just don't work out and are out of our control. I also learned that along with experience and a great robot it requires some luck to do well at competitions. It is important to understand this and move on and keep a positive attitude after things like this happen.

Later on during Einsteins we were cheering and finally had our spirits back.

[GreyingJay]

Originally Posted by marshall

The hardest personal lesson I learned this season...

I've never wanted to be a teacher.

This was the year I learned that I am one. It turns out mentors are teachers. Oops.

What's more aggravating to me is that this is the year that I finally learned what I want to teach my students. I don't actually want to teach them about science or math. I don't care if they learn engineering skills from me. I learned this year that the thing I want to teach is almost impossible to teach someone. I want my students to learn passion. I want them to care so much about what they are doing that they infect other people with it... be that FRC or anything else.

You know what, I take my previous lesson back. That was still an important lesson to me but it's not the most important.

The most important was a combination of what you've posted -- and a caveat. It's good to remember that we're not here to build robots. We're here to build students. The caveat is that it takes time, and not every student will get there at the same time, or even get there at all. And that's OK. Some change seems overnight. Others will take far longer. Our job is to be passionate. The rest isn't up to us.