Responsibilities of a Mentor

[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.