Mentors

[KenWittlief]

There are two aspects to a FIRST team

one is the part of the team that is very much like a HS club, like a chess club or ski club. There are meetings to schedule, uniforms, public service - and many other considerations that bond the students together as a unit, as a club, as a team - these things should definately be 'run' by the students

the other part is the engineering aspect of the robot design and build cycle. Unless your HS students have earned BSEE and BSME degreees already, how can they lead or run an engineering team?

If we could throw a box of parts at HS students and let them build a robot on their own, and have them somehow discover what engineering careers are like, then FIRST wouldnt be going through all this trouble to find corporate sponsers and thousands of mentors.

I think letting the students run and control the club/team aspect is excellent. But to let the students think they can compete against teams that have adult engineeing mentors would be cruel and pointless - all you are doing is setting them up to fail - and then they will come to the conclusion that engineering is complicated, too hard for them, something they are not good at - in other words, they will decide engineering sucks!