Team rules

[Herodotus]

We have a simple set of unwritten rules that people just sort of pick up on in the pre-season. Mostly it is simple common sense as opposed to any very specific or strict rules. When it comes to behavior you simply act with respect towards everyone on the team and everyone else we happen to meet with in the course of the season, and that basically covers all the bases. When it comes to safety we have the simple safety glasses when operating the tools in our machine shop, and make sure you keep the point bits pointed away from you. We also have a set of guidelines and releases we had to sign at the beginning of the year.

However we have had to create one very specific rule. Don't put sprockets in an empty pizza box and then throw it into the garbage. Something we learned from experience.

[Pelicano234]

As a rookie team, we only had a few rules:
1. You had to participate for 160 hours (which was quite easy, some kids ended up with close to 300 hours)
2. You had to bring in a meal for the team once during the build season
3. You had to raise $100 for the team

This worked out well for us and we will probably do something like it next year

[JohnBoucher]

Do any of your mentors belong to NEMO. http://www.firstnemo.org/

They are a support group and information exchange for adults running teams. They have lots of good stuff there.

Remember that your rules and handbooks are always a work in progress. The best thing that you can do is get something out there and keep refining it. Don't wait until you feel it is done. It will never be done.

[Scott Ritchie]

This is to explain what Ben was talking about a little more:

We do disband the team on the ride back from Atlanta. It has become a sort of ritual that has been done for the last three or four years. All students must reapply with a resume and interview with teachers and engineers. To make interviews go faster we schedule two groups of interview teams and the students spend 15 minutes with one then switch and spend 5 with the other. Students are rated on performance by all the engineers and teachers and we go over that rating with the student from that year and let the student tell us why they should be on the team. All the students know that they have to build their resume through the year so they push to do things like car washes, demos, Lego mentoring, Vex Mentoring, learn how to operate different machines or software, and so on. This has worked for us but I know there are teams that don’t like this type of structure and that is fine.