Mentor To Mentor Resource Thread

[ptan]

Originally Posted by HRobotics

Hi. This is Havergal's second year in FIRST Lego League, but we are still having problems, mainly with lack of interest from the students. They are constantly procrastinating and we had to rush to be able to complete our robot. Of course it was unsuccesful. The good thing is that now all the members (who are all new this year) can see what went wrong and what we want to fix for next time. The bad thing is that many are discouraged. How do you motivate your team and make learning a fun experience while getting things done?

Thank you so much,
- Stephanie, Robogators:3745 (FLL team)

Hi Stephanie,

I can understand your frustration. I've been working with the St. Clement's girls for the past 4 years now, and I've run into a lot of what you were seeing. Believe me, it was really frustrating, as I was always well aware of the time constraints needed (having been involved with FLL since the 2000 Volcano Panic outside of St. Clement's). Most of the girls did not see the need to rush the work, and when I tried to push them to work in the first year of FLL at St. Clement's, I got a lot of complaints and girls dropping out. So, I knew exactly what you mean... Our girls were actually commenting about your robot at the Greenwood tournament.

One of the things that also really threw me for a loop was that the motivation techniques are totally different for an all girls team, vs a mixed boy-girl team.

I eventually had to gradually build up the girls over the past few years, slowly getting them aware of the time constraints. However, it did WORK! We won the Director's award at the Provincials this weekend, and the girls are totally excited about going to Atlanta. The few girls that were complaining about the work are now starting to see the payoff.

So, the best advice I can give you is to keep at it. It DOES pay off! Get the girls to see the tournaments, and get them to think about the different designs the other teams are using. Work with them and push them just a bit more each time. In our case, I have been working with them since January for this team.

Another thing that I found that I had to do was actually to bribe them with food rewards, and doing things like letting them work and practice until they had to leave, not making them clean up (yes, I know that they should, but between the choice of getting them to work on the robot for 15 more minutes and having to clean up after them, I chose the 15 minutes. One of the previous teachers made them start cleaning up while the kids were really into working on a specific mission, and I felt that really threw off their concentration.)

If you ever want to chat about any of the items, feel free to contact me. I am certainly willing to help, but of course, I can't give all our secrets away...


Paul Tan.
Coach/Parent/Mentor/Food Provider/Lego cleanup crew
St. Clement's Lego Robotics
SCS Pengiuns Team 752