Responsibilities of a Mentor

[Scott Ritchie]

Mentors:

should promote advanced skills building on those learned during the day.
Offer training in skills not yet approached in school.
force the development of communication skills in students.
show students how to work as a team of students and adults.
will show students how to efficiently approach problems.
will lead by example when showing how to handle disagreement.
will show passion about the process and try and pass it along to students.
will not take themselves too seriously.
will help students develop "Moral authority" (I love that statement for whoever said it in this thread)
Will help lay the building blocks of ethics
need to demand safety
need to have an open mind, even for new ideas
(stopped here due to time)

Students:

need to want to work with the best minds available.
need to crave more knowledge.
need to take iniciative.
need to demand a quality product after the six weeks.
need to spread the excitement of the program to the rest of the school.
need to realize they need help to expand on things that have been developed since the dawn of man.
should feel comfortable in telling their mentors want.
need to have and open mind, even for old ideas.
(stopped her due to time)

As I was making this list I realize a student needs to be at a certain level to appreciate it and expand on it. I think I would not have been able to understand some of this when I was in high school. I think I would have told you to flip sand instead of listen to the people around me. I do see however in some four year FIRST students the ability use their mentors as the valuable resource they are.

Now back to my job.

Hope it helps in some way

[Kelly]

I'm getting a bit annoyed by everyone who keeps insisting that our sponsor must be ignorant of how FIRST works if he would propose a crazy idea like expecting students to understand their own machines. He understands the policies about mentors, he just disagrees with them. And so do I, for the reasons I've outlined in this thread.

[JaneYoung]

The partnership potential involving engineers, professionals, students, sponsors, and parent support, creates endless opportunities for removing limits and allowing access to knowledge, experience, and the standards of excellence.

Students can do a lot, they can't do it all. They don't have the skill sets or experience. They won't gain those in 6 weeks but they can be exposed to them if they are working in partnership with engineers and professionals.

On the other hand, if adult mentors are doing it all without the benefit of partnership with the students and sponsors, etc., then they, too, are setting limits on what the team can do and can achieve. When I look at our HoF teams, it is very clear to me that these teams have figured out how to maximize their partnerships, their strengths, and their team potential. Each of these outstanding teams is unique - no two are alike - but they have these qualities in common. Everyone works together towards the same goal, achieving excellence, and setting the bar for the rest of us.

[Sunshine]

I believe that I am right there with you Kelly.

I'm not going to pound my beliefs or my teams' goals into others BUT................

Our robot will always be student built.

The only time you will ever see a mentor in our pit working is in an extreme emergency and then you will see them showing students how to fix the problem. We did 3 events this year. No mentor working in St. Louis or Milwaukee. We had a mentor helping/showing students how to fix major problem in Atlanta.

I have a problem with the thinking of some if they believe that this experience is not similar to a normal lab setting. Students do not learn from watching a teacher performing a tune-up in the auto shop. Students learn by doing that tune-up after they were given direction.

We were next to a team at an event that NEVER had students around except when they showed up to get the robot to compete. The mentors were constantly tweaking/fixing the robot by themselves. Again, to me, this is a major opportunity lost for the students.

For us, we have a model that has been successful for the first two years of our existence. It involves having the students take on the responsibilities of the team. We as mentors guide, direct, give instruction, teach, give demo's. But students do the work or it does not get done.

We will never build a robot, decide on its design, write a chairman's submission, create a web page or make a CAD drawing.

But we show students how to do all of these things, help with spelling and grammar and help them setup time lines so they can be successful.