The institutionalization of FRC teams, and the toxicity it creates

[WorldOfRobots]

OP: I think you need to come up with what you want and expect out of FRC. You seem to want to be a good team, but you also want students to learn. Now, these are in absolutely no way mutually exclusive. You have to very carefully balance participating to win and participating to teach. If there are faults somewhere (robot, code, anything), talk about them. Don't leave an elephant in the room. Make sure your students know that if they make a mistake, it's okay, and talking about it isn't a personal attack (if parents need to be told this, then tell them too). This is all I feel comfortable / knowledgeable about regarding this topic, but I hope you can get some help out of it.

I'm no longer a member(I was a student) of this team, I may need to edit my post to make that clear. I'm a current alumni, working with FTC teams instead. I've declined the offer to mentor the team that this post is about. I didn't feel like this was mentor over-participation, which is a whole desperate issue, but not the one I encountered.

Thank you for your advice, though.

[jtrv]

Originally Posted by WorldOfRobots

I'm no longer a member(I was a student) of this team, I may need to edit my post to make that clear. I'm a current alumni, working with FTC teams instead. I've declined the offer to mentor the team that this post is about. I didn't feel like this was mentor over-participation, which is a whole desperate issue, but not the one I encountered.

Thank you for your advice, though.

I see now. Yes, you should edit your post to reflect this information, I got the vibe that you are a mentor of the team and still involved.