Team Organization and Recruiting

[The First Lady]

I am interested in some help to make a stronger team. We only have the resources to field a team of 35 students. We only have 8 seniors graduating and quite a few interested students for next year (including some from the Lego League teams we have been involved in). There were a few students who did not pull their weight this year. Do you have a system in place to weed out the students who are not productive? Please send any advice. You can respond with a reply or a PM.

[nerdcool64]

This year the Gila Monsters faced a similar situation. We employeed a point system. We gave 5 points or so for meeting attendance, points for weekends, community projects, fundraising and so on. Then when it came down to having to select between members for trips, the point rankings were consulted. This system is not perfect, and hopefully we will get enough sponsership and fundraising this next year to eliminate the need for such a system, but it took a lot of pressure off the mentors from having to select themselves.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by The First Lady

Do you have a system in place to weed out the students who are not productive?

While I realize that sometimes issues are more complex than they seem and that this is often such a case, I just wanted to caution you to remember that you're around for the students; they're not around for you.

Productivity doesn't intimate inspiration. Inspiration may not lead to productivity.

Consider what purpose your team serves to those students that you find to be unproductive before you deny them the opportunities to be involved in a program that is unrivaled in high schools.

[KathieK]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

Consider what purpose your team serves to those students that you find to be unproductive before you deny them the opportunities to be involved in a program that is unrivaled in high schools.

hmm... yes, I agree that the program serves all kinds of purposes above and beyond the inspiring students to pursue careers in the sciences.

Maybe a better question would be, how do you inspire a student to be a productive member of the team? And show up for meetings, contribute to the committees they have chosen to work on, not sleep through competitions, break team travel rules, not use the meetings for socializing with the members of the opposite gender?

While I agree that "belonging" to a team may be very important to a student, there are consequences in the real world for not performing on your job.

[Lisa Rodriguez]

Originally Posted by KathieK

Maybe a better question would be, how do you inspire a student to be a productive member of the team? And show up for meetings, contribute to the committees they have chosen to work on, not sleep through competitions, break team travel rules, not use the meetings for socializing with the members of the opposite gender?

While I agree that "belonging" to a team may be very important to a student, there are consequences in the real world for not performing on your job.

Yea Mrs K!
One more thing, how do you recruit kids that you know are going to work hard? Or if you don't know, how do you prevent them from being dead weight? I know there will always be some kids that will be there, but is there a way to prevent an overabundance of non-contributing kids BEFORE build season?

[samson234]

Unfortunately my team suffers from a similar problem, First Lady. We go though an interview process every year and share with the teachers what we have learned that year. Also, we tell them our where we want to be at the close of the next year. This works very well but, not always do you see a kid who will do absolutely nothing before they make it to the team. Just remember that keeping a kid on the team who takes little interest in the team is denying another kid the FIRST experience.

[KathieK]

Originally Posted by samson234

Just remember that keeping a kid on the team who takes little interest in the team is denying another kid the FIRST experience.

Exactly! When you tell someone that your team has reached its capacity, and then have students who are not really pulling their weight (and we have a variety of opportunities that could interest just about anyone) is it fair to the student you turned away?

[Jessica Boucher]

First of all, what will your number be without those seniors? Is it 27 or is it less? It changes your recruiting if you're closer to capacity. You may want to ask the applicants to submit some sort of application, in varying degrees of complexity (it could be anywhere from a paragraph as to why they want to be on the team to a full-blown application). The alternative is to accept anyone on the team that wants to join, coupled with the truth that not everyone will go to Atlanta...but I suggest that this would need some sort of evaluation process implemented.

And from how I understand it, it's not that you want to deprive anyone of the experience, but it's more of dealing with the issue that you can only provide for 35 at this moment in time and you want to give that to the students who are more likely to get more out of it (assuming that the people who put in the most work is because they are the most interested). Just to clarify, in "providing" for a student, does that mean they go for free? Or does this team they are allowed to go, but still have to fork over some money at the end? That changes things as well

There are many ways that you can "weed" out students. I've heard of point systems, report cards, 360-degree analyses, and the like. But in the end, it's all about using what's best for your team. With these seniors, are you losing a lot of your student leadership/management? Do you have a student/some students in place for when the seniors leave, or is it unnecessary? I'd love to know more about your team's specific structure. Which system will work best will depend on the time that the management can put in to compile the results.

Mind you, you may not find that thing that works best on the first try...it may take multiple instances before something really sticks. So just like the robot, don't be afraid of trial and error when it comes to managing your team!

I know there's a lot of variables, and I'm not answering much in this post, but it can be worked out pretty quickly with some brainstorming. Please PM me if you'd like to talk more about this.

Good luck!
-Jessica B

[Collin Fultz]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

While I realize that sometimes issues are more complex than they seem and that this is often such a case, I just wanted to caution you to remember that you're around for the students; they're not around for you.

Productivity doesn't intimate inspiration. Inspiration may not lead to productivity.

Consider what purpose your team serves to those students that you find to be unproductive before you deny them the opportunities to be involved in a program that is unrivaled in high schools.

I agree with M. on this one. In my opinion it's all about the "I". However, it isn't up to the mentors to have to work to inspire the students, in my opinion. THe student has to put forth the effort. It is up to the mentors to decide who is letting the team inspire the student. It normally takes more than a year for a student to realize how amazing this program is (mentors too). I know it did for me. I barely did anything my first year, but after I found my role and realized how great FIRST is, i was in. I am so thankful that my team gave me the opportunity to travel to competitions where i could work on what I loved (communication). Now, I have learned to appriciate and excel in both aspects of the FIRST competition (the robot and the communication). Give the students a chance...let them niche (sp.?). Don't make them lose their spot on the team because they didn't build the robot...maybe those things aren't for them. GIve them a chance.

[Bcahn836]

We keep track of how many hours each person puts in. As soon as they walk in the door they sign in date and time. The most dedicated and the ones with the most hours and that want to go on a trip can go. But we do not elminate people because they don't pull their weight. They may have the hours but we also look at effort. And if they are doing nothing when their is alot to do then we ask them to leave. ( beside the usual break).
We have no limit when it comes to members but we do have standards. As far as recruting our team advertises in the three high schools and a few middle schools about what we do. When school starts the veteren members ,with the guidence of the mentors, take control and find out what each newbie is interested in and puts them in a training course. If they do not like that specialized area they can switch into a different one untill they become comfortable. This years project during the off season is to build a new cart which will include all of our subteams to build.

[phrontist]

Hmmm... two words man:

Peer Pressure

It works wonders. If the majority of the people are pulling their weight, and see some leech goofing off, make it a commonly accepted practice to ostracize them. The problem will promptly solve itself. No one wants The Man telling them what to do! If their friends make it clear that what they are doing in unacceptable, they'll change in a hurry.

Just mold your team's social dynamics, and remember that kids ridiculing one another can be a good thing at times. Make slacking off taboo!

That said, I must say we are a very small team where most want to work hard. We are fairly relaxed and tolerate some good natured time wasting, but everyone is quick to jump one another if it gets out of hand.

The real danger I could forsee would be a small faction of people united in their slacking. You've really got a problem if this happens. I've never seen this on robotics, but its happened on stagecrew occasionally (and I was usually part of the problem )

[Mike M.]

Well on my team we don't have a limit of the number of students that can join the team. The thing that I think weeds out the most people is our annual preseason mini-FIRST bridge building competition this seems to show all of our students what the whole program is like because we run it like a real FIRST competition with a common kit of parts, judges, and such. But we also have somewhat strict requirements for making our travel team. Each student has to raise $100 in fundraising, have a certain amount of hours (the adults that work with those students decide if those are quality hours or not), we also in teams of 3 or 4 students have to go out into the community and present the program to local businesses to get their financial support of the team, and keep up our grades. This year out of our 42 students we had 35 of them make the travel team, and we are losing 7 seniors. We really don't do a whole lot of recruiting but we do put on a little demo during the lunches before the season to bring about awareness of the program.

On the matter of keeping students on task we had a problem with this so we had an all student meeting to let the whole student part of the team what was going on and that if there was nothing to do go talk to one of the adults to see if they had anything to do even if its as little a job as designing a button or a huge undertaking like getting a system built it is still an important one.

We also have a FIRST student council that will deal with some of these types of problems and they also provide a link between the students and the adults. They are 5 students one from each class and one that represents all classes, they are elected reps.

ok but enough of my rambling this is just my $0.02

Yay my 100th post

[Katie Reynolds]

Originally Posted by KathieK

Maybe a better question would be, how do you inspire a student to be a productive member of the team? And show up for meetings, contribute to the committees they have chosen to work on, not sleep through competitions, break team travel rules, not use the meetings for socializing with the members of the opposite gender?

While I agree that "belonging" to a team may be very important to a student, there are consequences in the real world for not performing on your job.

Some people join a FIRST team just because their friends did it. FIRST could work out great for the student's friends, but the program isn't for everybody. And while "peer pressure" may encourage some students to work harder, it could also keep students who really don't want to be involved, in.

Have you tried talking to the student(s)? Sometimes, students (especially rookies) goof off just to get noticed. I would imagine that rookie walking into a room if veteran FIRSTers and trying to present an idea is kind of like you or I walking into a room full of NASA scientists and giving them ideas for how to build their next space module (Quiet, Dave. ) The point is, rookie or not, FIRST can be very intimidating. And if there isn't anyone there to say, "Hey kid, what do you think?" or "I noticed you signed up for this committee, have you made any progress? Do you need any help?" it's more likely that some students will start slacking.

If people are still slacking off, only coming to meetings searching for a new boyfriend/girlfriend, or breaking travel rules make sure they know that there won't be much travel in the future for them unless their behavior changes. Usually, that'll make the kids who care try harder and the kids who are in it for a free ride, drop it.

[KathieK]

These have all been great suggestions. We had a "debriefing" meeting of the team last night and each team member had an opportunity to say something about this season. There were some recurring themes mentioned, which is very helpful for improving for next year.

This was RAGE's first year in a new committee structure, and we had a large team this year. We know better now what worked and what didn't and how we can move forward in a positive way.