Mentors VS Students

[dcbrown]

Looking forward to this fall your team might want to engage in a series of structured activities. It can accomplish two things. It helps the group move through the group dynamics stated above. That helps a lot when the build season starts. And it give the group an opportunity to do some fun stuff. It is tough getting to the performing stage in 6 weeks with a group that hasn't worked together before.

Also, the Quicksilver (Karl Rohnke) series of books has lots of games for groups designed to help a group get through the first couple of evolutionary steps.

An idea I've always toyed with but never had the opportunity to do was to bring in a local dance studio/facilitator that does basic dance survival for teens. It always looked like a blast and helps break down a whole set of communication barriers between team members.

[dcbrown]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Team2339
We finally bonded after the van motor ( my dumb idea ) failed to hold the arm up.

If the goal is to 'force' a failure to get the team jump started started then the idea isn't dumb but really smart.

Now we are talking about original intent, but pssssttt, we will keep it a secret and not tell your students.

Really, it was genius.

Ditto. What a great strategy to get students to own the process! Pure genius!

[Steve W]

I may be miss quoting but I believe that Dave Lavery said that FIRST is as good as it is because it is a program were students work side by side with engineers (mentors).

My thoughts, all teams are different. What works for our team won't necessarily work for yours. What works this year for your team may not work next year. I believe that with out engineers and mentors, working side by side with students, FIRST would not be successful. As a mentor I have learned a lot from students. I wish that I had a great program when I was younger that I could have learned from engineers.

I know that people say that you learn from your mistakes but even more valuable is learning from others successes. You see posted here on CD how great team 71, 111, 47, 45, 1114 are and how everyone would like to be as good. All of these teams have a good mentor/student relationships where they all work side by side as a team. It should never be us or them it should always be WE are working on the robot.

Talk out your issues and see how the team can grow. Posting here about internal team issues only brings division on the team.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

To students:

I know you think you know it all. I was in the same boat a few years back when I was a student on a team. I'll let you know that I WAS WRONG! Please listen to your mentors. They know what they are talking about. (All those degrees and years of experience have to add up to something, eh?)

Also, don't forget that your mentors are volunteering their time to help you. Without them you wouldn't have a team. So what's more important? Having a team or winning an ego battle over who's part goes on the robot?

[Team 135]

We had a similar problem with one of our mentors recently and what I have to say is that you should always consider what the mentors have to offer your team. Do not make them mad or they may leave your team, it is fully voluntary that they are helping. With that said, FIRST is all about students. It is what you as the student will get out of the experience. Talk with you mentors in a mature fashion and let them know how you feel. As hard as it may be, remember gracious professionalism.

[Molten]

My team has it set up where we (the mentors/teachers) don't even discuss the design until all of the students have presented their ideas. Also, we are half way with build season without much done. That is because students tend to put things off. Once you get down to the last 2 weeks though they work that much harder to make up for it. Truth is, sometimes a mentor just needs to be put in their place. They may not like it and may complain that they are just trying to help. But sometimes the best way to help is to leave good enough alone. Besides, let's pretend you win and your mentors did all of the work...Did it mean anything? The mentors proved that they could
out-engineer a bunch of students. Not really something to be proud of. And the students proved that they can do nothing but take orders. Once again, nothing to be proud of. If the mentors really want to help, they will listen and let you do the work. Don't complain if it seems like too much work, it wouldn't be FIRST if it wasn't too much. Just do your best and work at it. Good luck at everything, and I hope to hear how this all works out for you.

[gurellia53]

Try having a student or two and mentor work together on a specific part of a robot. The student's should be the ones who design and build it, but the mentors are still there to give ideas and make the students aware of the pros and cons of each idea.

Thats how we try to do it, but as mentioned before, each team is different.

[dlavery]

"FIRST is all about students"

May I go off on a slight tangent for a moment? The quote above has been thrown about quite a bit - several times already in this thread, and many, many times over the past few years. And I keep wondering to myself "where is this coming from?" Because, with regard to the statement itself, I have only one comment to make - bullcrap.

Can anyone show me a single piece of FIRST documentation, or show a piece of FIRST literature, or quote a public statement by a FIRST founder, or cite a reference by any senior FIRST official, that sources this quote? Can you show me anything in the FIRST charter that says the programs is "all about the students"? Can you find anywhere in the FIRST vision statement that makes that claim?

No. You can't.

Why? For one very simple reason - FIRST is not that narrow-minded. If you think that FIRST is "all about the students" and therefore only about the students, then - to be blunt - you just don't get it. Look at the vision statement from FIRST. Listen to the way that the founder of the program describes FIRST when he talks about it (in particular, if you can find copies of Dean's kick-off speeches from the late 1990's, they are very direct and on-point about this). Attempt to understand the perspectives of the members of the FIRST Board of Directors, the major suppliers, and the founding sponsors, and what they are trying to accomplish.

The idea that FIRST is "all about the students" is an urban myth that has grown in the community, and allowed to florish because it has been unchallenged. Well, I think it is time to stand up and challenge it. Because it is much too limiting. It is forcing us to look at the world through much too narrow of a viewpoint.

FIRST is about changing a culture. Yes, a big part of their implementation plan involves affecting the perceptions and appreciation of students, and having them carry the message out to the cultural mainstream of this country. They want students to be inspired. But they don't stop there. It is not just about affecting the students. Inspiration happens at many levels, and cultural change can come from anywhere. Students, mentors, schools, corporations, teams, and communities are all affected by this program (or should be). And every team that limits themselves to "just students" automatically limits themselves in their ability to have an impact on a larger community.

Ask any mentor that has worked with this program for more than a year "have you been inspired?" Ask any sponsor "why do you support our team, year after year?" Ask any supporting corporation "why do you dedicate your organizational time, resources and employees to this?" I am willing to bet that most of them will come back and say that it is because they are just as inspired by the program as the students, and they have reached a point where they just have to participate. They get just as enthusiastic and supportive of the mission of FIRST as any of the students. And they are just as critical to successfully fulfilling the vision of cultural change as the students.

Students, mentors, schools, corporations, teams, and communities - they are all critical to the success of FIRST. Can you help the process along by only focusing on one of these sub-cultures? Maybe. But you are be nowhere near as effective and productive as if you include them all. And to ignore the advantages of the resources they can bring to help address the problem is - bluntly put - really dumb.

-dave


.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by cmonkey99

We're having some problems on our team as Mentor vs. Student powers lately.

It seems that about 5 of us will start working on the robot with our previously decided design and one of our mentors will come back from the shop with the part already built but in a completely different design and most of the time very quickly and poorly done.

Then about half the time we're able to convince them to change the part back and the other half of the time they "convince" us with their supreme knowledge( )that their idea or part is better.

Now I thought the purpose of the mentors was to suggest things sometimes and help us out when we needed it. Not to change our design and make half-baked parts.

Its gotten to the point where I almost feel like dropping out of the club and focusing on MESA and other things.

Not to mention the fact that there are only about half the students doing much work, the other half just sit around and shoot the breeze.

I was wondering if any of you have faced similar situations or have any suggestions.

Keep in mind we're a fairly small team with about 4-7 students and 2-3 mentors at each build meeting

Thanks for any help

I'm going to start by echoing what others have said: you need to talk about this as a team. Not a team of students, but a team. This includes everyone.

You have decided on a design. Good. One or more mentors are building parts for another design. Not good. Part of this team meeting should be to bring everyone up to speed on "this is the design we chose as a team, stick to it." If there are changes, make them publicly, without just building them.

The mentors are there for several reasons, and their role can be made clear in a team handbook. On some teams, they are only there to make sure no one gets hurt. On others, they work alongside the students to produce a design and then build from it. On all, they should teach the students--and be willing to learn themselves.

About the non-participating students: Get them involved. There should be more than enough work for everyone. As said before, tell them they "volunteered" for something. They did: they made it obvious that they had nothing to do. Now they have something to do. If they don't want to work on the robot, they can work on awards (Woodie Flowers and Chairman's come to mind). If they just plain don't want to work, give them the option to leave the team.

Two further things: a team handbook may help you in the future. This will have team rules and what to expect in it. It will also help define the mentor-student roles.

The other thing has to do with the design/building of the robot. This story is highly applicable to FIRST, especially the list at the end.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by dlavery

FIRST is about changing a culture. Yes, a big part of their implementation plan involves affecting the perceptions and appreciation of students, and having them carry the message out to the cultural mainstream of this country. They want students to be inspired. But they don't stop there. It is not just about affecting the students. Inspiration happens at many levels, and cultural change can come from anywhere. Students, mentors, schools, corporations, teams, and communities are all affected by this program (or should be). And every team that limits themselves to "just students" automatically limits themselves in their ability to have an impact on a larger community.

Ask any mentor that has worked with this program for more than a year "have you been inspired?" Ask any sponsor "why do you support our team, year after year?" Ask any supporting corporation "why do you dedicate your organizational time, resources and employees to this?" I am willing to bet that most of them will come back and say that it is because they are just as inspired by the program as the students, and they have reached a point where they just have to participate. They get just as enthusiastic and supportive of the mission of FIRST as any of the students. And they are just as critical to successfully fulfilling the vision of cultural change as the students.

Students, mentors, schools, corporations, teams, and communities - they are all critical to the success of FIRST. Can you help the process along by only focusing on one of these sub-cultures? Maybe. But you are be nowhere near as effective and productive as if you include them all. And to ignore the advantages of the resources they can bring to help address the problem is - bluntly put - really dumb.

-dave


.

For many, this may be a new concept, seeing the full picture. The whole. For me to visualize it, I think of a pie with separate pieces. Each piece is part of the whole and, as Dave says, 'critical to successfully fulfilling the vision of culture change'.

It is easy to have tunnel vision, sometimes getting bogged down. It is more difficult to see the bigger picture and set long term goals. Those long term goals include areas such as establishing ways of cycling in rookie students and mentors as veterans leave or move on, sustaining the team. Keeping sponsors interested and involved, knowing their contributions are appreciated. Keeping teams healthy and active over the long term.

When everyone is on the same page and working together, the team is supported and much better equipped to deal with changing the culture within the community and beyond.

Thanks Dave!

[wireties]

Like most of the things that come up in this competition, this mentor/student role is a real-world engineering problem. Most companies have groups of energetic young engineers and older engineers who have been around a few years. Striking a good balance between the energy and innovation of the younger girls/guys and the wisdom of the older guys/girls is critical to building a good team. So the 'problems' discussed in this thread are not specific to FIRST or to the student/mentor relationship but rather to generic team building and team dynamics.

Having said that, there is one big problem with my analogy. Even young professional engineers have endured the academics to earn the title. That is not so with high school students. On our team, the students make the decisions but the mentors provide guidance, making them aware of decision criteria etc. The mentors provide guidance about process (safety, using correct tooling, quality assurance, documentation, do the math first!!) during the build phase.

I disagree with the "letting them fail" philosophy. To begin with, there is only 6 weeks and precious little time for repeated failures. And this is not a good real world example. Engineers are paid to deliver on time and within budget, not to fail. I encourage students to listen when a mentor says that something will not work.

Let me put this into perspective. Our team has a great set of dedicated mentors and teachers. I added up the cost of this group the other day, if the team paid the mentors (at their employers normal rates) it would cost nearly $2,000 per hour! So the mentors are a VALUABLE resource, to not use them wisely is kinda silly. But the focus should be on the students.

HTH

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by cmonkey99

We're having some problems on our team as Mentor vs. Student powers lately.

It seems that about 5 of us will start working on the robot with our previously decided design and one of our mentors will come back from the shop with the part already built but in a completely different design and most of the time very quickly and poorly done.

Then about half the time we're able to convince them to change the part back and the other half of the time they "convince" us with their supreme knowledge( )that their idea or part is better.

Now I thought the purpose of the mentors was to suggest things sometimes and help us out when we needed it. Not to change our design and make half-baked parts.

Its gotten to the point where I almost feel like dropping out of the club and focusing on MESA and other things.

Not to mention the fact that there are only about half the students doing much work, the other half just sit around and shoot the breeze.

I was wondering if any of you have faced similar situations or have any suggestions.

Keep in mind we're a fairly small team with about 4-7 students and 2-3 mentors at each build meeting

Thanks for any help

I'm repeating what's already been said, but frankly it's important enough to bear repeating. You've fallen into a typical high school mindset trap, the terrible, unfixable "Us vs. Them" mentality. That's not to say that this mindset doesn't exist in other arenas, just later in life most people figure out that it doesn't work. Neither side gets what they want. And both sides get a whole lot of needless headache.

First off, both sides need to respect the other. By calling their parts "very quickly and poorly done." it would appear you don't harbor a whole lot of respect for them.

In the same token, if your mentors are running off creating "half baked" parts, without telling you, or explaining them to you, then it wouldn't appear that they are showing a terribly large amount of respect for you either.

You don't specifically mention what their backgrounds are, but if they are leading the team, I'm going to assume even if they don't have engineering degrees they at least have plenty of experience working on things of this nature, and that is worth just as much, if not more. If you sit down, and honestly think about, most likely you'll find that they do know than you do. I know mine do.

Even if you do look into your heart of hearts, and you still think you know more than they do, remember, without adults, your team is pretty much sunk. So start showing them some respect, or they just might leave. I don't think they want, and I hope that's not what you want either.

So, show them some respect. You might be surprised what you get in return. No one wants to deal with "know-it-all" teenagers. I've spent about a month over the past two school years shadowing engineers in industry and mechanics at shops. I've spent 5 years building FRC robots. And if you want to listen to adults, you'll find that they are ecstatic that you are willing to listen and want to learn.

[JesseK]

Sorry that I'm simply skimming most of the replies -- this is a tough subject so I'll give my reply without letting another's thought sway mine.

It sounds like the mentors don't trust the students, and the students haven't been given an opportunity to be trusted by the mentors. In the end this will only burn everyone out.

First, your team needs firm leadership. It in incontravertibly the most important role on the team. Teams in the real world have team leads, and it's for a purpose. There has to be one person everyone can go to in order to keep everything straight. This will greatly help your communication issues. You (the students) need to let the lead know that you have a need to more effectively communicate with your mentors. If you don't agree with the leadership, well, that's tough sometimes. If you're good, you will learn the ways to get your ideas heard (usually it takes ALOT (aka TON, GRANDE, BEAUCOUP) of work on your part) regardless of whether you and the leadership get along.

Second, you need to sit down with your mentors and tell them how disappointed in them you are. Perhaps they are going off somewhere to build XX component because they themselves are unsure of how it's built and want to be able to learn on their own how to build it without students losing faith when they mess up 20 times before getting it right. Your disappointment should never be focused on something like this; it instead should be disappointing that they expect to use something they built during this private process without involving you at all so you could at least begin to fathom the realm of processes that went into the design and its iterations from the original.

However, to get past #2 in the 2008 season this far in, you will need some concrete evidence that trump's the mentor's decisions and/or bad fabrication methods. Usually "quality control" testing works for this regard so long as your team's budget isn't on the line. Be sure to record it via video tape or digital camera video, as it really is an important part of the engineering process. Remember, the QC process is important, NOT the fact that a part built by XYZ engineer failed -- NEVER point that out as it's rarely important: always stay positive! We literally sat and threw the trackball at our frame for 10 minutes throwing/dropping it from 6' up at different angles just to make sure the frame would hold itself together. We had to go back and support some things a mentor (aka me) didn't account for, but that's what a team is there for and I'm glad I was corrected by the students.

Third, students will realize after their first year that there are no magic wands in this world that make Cool Idea #1958742.b come to reality without extenuous thought and effort that usually includes CAD or a prototype. If it doesn't have either of those, it's usually not a cool idea that foster's ideas and input. To speed this process up, we encourage our Freshmen to do FTC only. This allows them to learn our entire engineering process and community image in a smaller, screw-up-friendly environment. Literally, if they build something to try and go fast only to have the wheels fall off at competition, no mentors say "I told you so". For FTC we simply guide them and let them take whatever way they want. It's then they realize that there are many ways to do something, and the best way usually is already being done by those who have already done it. After that, you'll see the pipe dream robots disappear.

Now on to reading the plethora of wisdom said before I got here...

[Cynette]

Originally Posted by Team2339

We finally bonded after the van motor ( my dumb idea ) failed to hold the arm up. Ideas poured out like water and the design by students was on.

Originally Posted by ebarker

If the goal is to 'force' a failure to get the team jump started started then the idea isn't dumb but really smart.

Now we are talking about original intent, but pssssttt, we will keep it a secret and not tell your students.

Really, it was genius.

Exactly my thought also after reading about the failure leading to engagement by the students!

Failure that teaches and inspires isn't failure at all! But if we could just successfully plan that failure we would really be content!

[Beth Sweet]

Originally Posted by dlavery

May I go off on a slight tangent for a moment? The quote above has been thrown about quite a bit - several times already in this thread, and many, many times over the past few years. And I keep wondering to myself "where is this coming from?" Because, with regard to the statement itself, I have only one comment to make - bullcrap.

Can anyone show me a single piece of FIRST documentation, or show a piece of FIRST literature, or quote a public statement by a FIRST founder, or cite a reference by any senior FIRST official, that sources this quote? Can you show me anything in the FIRST charter that says the programs is "all about the students"? Can you find anywhere in the FIRST vision statement that makes that claim?

No. You can't.

Why? For one very simple reason - FIRST is not that narrow-minded. If you think that FIRST is "all about the students" and therefore only about the students, then - to be blunt - you just don't get it. Look at the vision statement from FIRST. Listen to the way that the founder of the program describes FIRST when he talks about it (in particular, if you can find copies of Dean's kick-off speeches from the late 1990's, they are very direct and on-point about this). Attempt to understand the perspectives of the members of the FIRST Board of Directors, the major suppliers, and the founding sponsors, and what they are trying to accomplish.

The idea that FIRST is "all about the students" is an urban myth that has grown in the community, and allowed to florish because it has been unchallenged. Well, I think it is time to stand up and challenge it. Because it is much too limiting. It is forcing us to look at the world through much too narrow of a viewpoint.

FIRST is about changing a culture. Yes, a big part of their implementation plan involves affecting the perceptions and appreciation of students, and having them carry the message out to the cultural mainstream of this country. They want students to be inspired. But they don't stop there. It is not just about affecting the students. Inspiration happens at many levels, and cultural change can come from anywhere. Students, mentors, schools, corporations, teams, and communities are all affected by this program (or should be). And every team that limits themselves to "just students" automatically limits themselves in their ability to have an impact on a larger community.

Ask any mentor that has worked with this program for more than a year "have you been inspired?" Ask any sponsor "why do you support our team, year after year?" Ask any supporting corporation "why do you dedicate your organizational time, resources and employees to this?" I am willing to bet that most of them will come back and say that it is because they are just as inspired by the program as the students, and they have reached a point where they just have to participate. They get just as enthusiastic and supportive of the mission of FIRST as any of the students. And they are just as critical to successfully fulfilling the vision of cultural change as the students.

Students, mentors, schools, corporations, teams, and communities - they are all critical to the success of FIRST. Can you help the process along by only focusing on one of these sub-cultures? Maybe. But you are be nowhere near as effective and productive as if you include them all. And to ignore the advantages of the resources they can bring to help address the problem is - bluntly put - really dumb.

-dave


.

Brandon, can we change it so that I can spotlight this whole post?

What I love about Dave is that he's not afraid to speak the truth, even if people don't want to hear it. This is the truth folks. I don't like to read big long posts, but this one is actually valid.

This is a tough time in the build season, we're all getting down and tired, I know. Read through this post, it can help to give you perspective