FAHA: No effort and all the benefit?

[Ken Leung]

People assume a lot of great mentors are born to know how to run a robotics team. Not many understand that they too had to go through the learning stage before years of experience put together great robotics education programs. And how did they gain those experiences? Well, one way is to solve little problems like the following letter from a fellow rookie FIRST-a-holic. The more scenarios you have to face through out your FIRST career, the better you are at dealing with up coming problems and situations.

So please be generous in your advice and help this rookie improve their program so things like the following situation doesn't happen again. Take a look:

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I have a dilemma with one of our team mates who was ineligible for the six-week building period, and after he was eligible again he didn't show up for the building of the second robot. We are a rookie team and I am looking from guidence. This person now wants all of the accolades that the ten of us that spent every night working till midnight when he didn't do anything. He told our sponser that he should be allowed to go because he has been there before and most of the scouting goes on during Thursday. Could you tell me if his claim is true and if you we should allow him to come.(whe ten of us on the build team are staying at a motel while the rest of the team comes back and forth.)His excuse sounded to me like he was trying to use his experience as an excuse to get all the glory without doing any of the work. Please help us in our dilimma. Thank you

[KenWittlief]

on our team if you miss ANY meetings without a very good reason, you cannot travel with the team

by being not eligible I take it you mean the school has academic requirements for students to participate, like sports teams do - and he failed to meet them?

that is his responsibility, not the teams - I have been on teams where students were not allowed to travel for similar reasons - they were upset at the time, but they came back the next year and said it was the best thing that ever happened to them

if students are not held accountable for their actions they will not succeed in life.

[Chris Hibner]

I've always viewed the competitions as the reward for the weeks of long work. It is my philosophy that if you don't do the work, you don't deserved the reward. Simple as that.

Our team has an 85% attendance rule - if you don't participate with the team activities 85% of the time, you cannot go to the competitions. That 85% only counts the scheduled time (i.e. it doesn't include the extra hours during crunch time). Therefore, if one of the students misses more than 15% of the scheduled time, the student can make up for it by working extra hours during crunch time.

To summarize, if I were in your shoes, I would tell the person that you're sorry but a minimum effort is required during the build period and that effort wasn't met.

In the future, I would suggest setting down some rules and guidelines in writing. Rules and guidelines seem much more fair to people if they know what they are up front. That way, when the person didn't meet the guidelines, they have no excuses, like "but I didn't know...".

[IMDWalrus]

The simplest answer: has he contributed anything to the team?

If not, then he definitely shouldn't go.

If he has, consider what it was that he's done for the team. Was it important to your accomplishments thus far?

Also...experience is overrated. I've only been in FIRST for two years, and even I've seen rookie teams do great even though they weren't quite sure what they were doing.

It would help if we knew why he missed the meetings during the build. Family reasons? Health problems? Just didn't feel like showing up? If it was beyond his control, don't hold it against him...but if he just didn't feel like contributing, there's no reason at all for him to start at the competitions.

Going from the information at hand, I'd say that he shouldn't be allowed to go.

[Paradox1350]

Yeah, we have that problem, and I would guess that every team has that problem. It's the same for any extra curricular activity, and any project. We didn't anticipate it ourselves, and there are people that are coming with us that most of us feel did no work. There were about 8 of us that gave up 80 hours of our February Vacation to wrok on the Bot. Then there were those that didn't even show their faces during those days. But because we didn't have preset standards, there's nothing we can do.

So, we let it go this year, and put rules into effect next year. It's all we can do, so there's no use worring about it.

[dlavery]

Our team has a similar arrangement. You must attend (and participate) in at least 80% of the meetings and work sessions to go on any of the trips. You have to attend (and contribute) to at least 60% to stay on the team. We also have a minimum grade level requirement, consistent with the academic performance requirements for the other activities in the school (sports, clubs, etc.). If you don't work hard enough to meet the requirements and contribute to the success of the team, then you don't get to reap the rewards.

-dave

[Chris Fultz]

After a problem a few years ago when a student said he was always there, and the menors said no you weren't - we started recording attendance. Students must sign in and out. Students are required to meet a minimum number of nights, and a minimum number of hours on those nights (you can't show up, sign in and leave). Students can get bonus attendance points for working the unscheduled times during the final weeks of build.

If a student is not contributing, we deal with that as it is happening instead of waiting until travel time to bring it up.

Students must also meet school requirements to stay on the team and to travel with the team. All students are required to have a signed form from teachers stating that it is acceptable for them to miss xx days and that their academic work is good.

We even give an attendance award at our team awards night.
Have a written policy, and enforce it.

And, to the other part of your question - a lot of good scouting goes on during Thursday. You need to begin to identify who can do what so that you are ready for your first match on Friday. Scouting information will change during matches Friday and Saturday as teams break or get fixed and improve, but you have to be ready in case you are match #1 on Friday.

[KenWittlief]

another thing to consider- if a student hasnt been showing up at the meetings, when he was able to -did not show an interest in spending time with the team

then what do you think he will do at the event? think he will suddenly want to be with the team for 72 hours straight

or will he be off somewhere on his own, doing who knows what?

[Bharat Nain]

If I were you, with a very kind and sympathetic heart, I would answer the following questions, and then see if he should go:

1) Since he has not contributed much in the past, is he really willing to do so now?
2) Is he doing well academically?
3) Does he show a good attitude in the present meetings towards work and other team members?
4) Does he look promising to do some hard work in the future?
5) In your opinion, what would you do if you were him and he were you?(Take this into slight consideration, but NEVER base your final decision on this)

Ask questions as such, and you shall find you answer somewhere along...

[R2K2D2]

This is a very common problem with FIRST teams, I know our team has faced the same issue in previous years. What we have done is created a student handbook, and in this handbook are all the requirements that students must meet as participants on this team. This directly correlates to attendance at competitions. As Chris said earlier, competitions are a reward for the hard work and effort. The first major requirement is a grade requirement. The student has to be getting a minimum of a certain set GPA with certain set grades for classes taken that semester. A special progress report is taken by each student to their teachers and filled out and turned in. Then, the next requirement is attendance. The Technical Applications Team has created an on-line attendance program that monitors when students were working, for how long, and what they did. This gives the team direct evidence when having to make an attendance decision. If a student forgets to sign in, their loss, it is their responsibility to remember and follow through with it.

If I were you present your evidence to this student and their parents, and make a decision from there. I don't feel that I can tell a student no unless I have a proven/documented reason why they shouldn't. This is why the attendance monitoring system is important.

[sanddrag]

Just a couple of side notes. One, school isn't everything. While several people with low grades and GPAs and who are failing courses may not be deserving of a spot on the robotics team, there are a few that are very talented in other areas than academics. Robotics may be the key to opening them up to a whole new world. A slight bit, this ties in with my point number two. There was a spotlight on here (I think by M. Krass) that went "think not of what the student does for the team but what the team can do for the student" At the Phoenix regional, that guy from Microchip said something I will never forget, "FIRST is about making you all become more productive citizens" If that student with D's and F's is never given that chance to shine, perhaps they never will. One may say that "so what, this failing student had the same opportunity in school as everyone else who is passing" but one needs to remember that different people excel in different areas. It is impossible to custom tailer schooling to each student but trying at least a little certainly doesn't hurt anything. Nobody is good at everything, and everyone isn't good at the same thing. Besides, FIRST has an "I" for Inspiration not an "E" for Elitism. The student mentioned here seems like he just needs to be Inspired.

I sincerely apologize if I have gotten a bit off topic but you know when the fingers go a typin'...