FAHA: To motivate or to dissolve?

[Bharat Nain]

The following is a message from the original poster.

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Since I'm the original poster I thought I could clarify where we are in the process, adding some more info so as to better provide ideas and solicit input.

Thank you all for the additional input. I thought I should clarify some things-
1) This is our 6th year as a team but only our 4th year at this location.
2) The school has two teachers that support and spend time working with us- one teacher managed to get a robotics class offered. The principal fully support FIRST.
3) There are work requirements- if you're not here, you don't go there.
4) We have at most 12 students active- there are 30 signed up.
5) We do regularly take students into the shop to do things. (For instance) You know those encoders that came with this year's gearbox- the little plastic thingies didn't fit. So we had a mentor pop one in aluminum and had a student cut it out. Mentoring doesn't mean 'standing over you like a parent to make sure you're doing something"
6) We go to 1 event. That's all we've ever been able to afford. The team talks about going to others- and never does any fund raising to get there.
7) My mentors are godsends- all 8 of them. They're dedicated and the come in and they all understand and share my frustrations. I do need more and have had talks about this with our company president and vp's in charge of engineering.
8) There is no team leader. I had a long heart to heart with several students about 'stepping up' to assume the mantle of command and no one has demonstrated it. Perhaps I'll address this tomorrow morning and ask who is the team leader.

Were I to remove every student that isn't motivated I would have 5 students. 5 students does not make a team. As I read your responses and weigh with what I know... then I look at your team sizes... we really do not have the motivation.

Has anyone successfully merged into another team?

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[smurfgirl]

In your first post, it sounds like you effectively want to shut down the team. In my opinion, this isn't going to do anything useful for the students, although it will make your life slightly less frustrating. Overall, though, there will be no chance for the rewarding experiences FIRST can give to both students and mentors.

It can be really, really hard to be a mentor, or anyone who is very passionate about FIRST, when the people around you just don't seem that into it. It sounds like you've tried as hard as you can to give the students all the resources to discover their potential and the great things FIRST has to offer... but that's really all you can do. You can't force them to realize what FIRST is about and learn the life lessons that are out there, they have to discover it for themselves.

As hard as it is to step back for a bit... maybe you should do this. Discuss what is going on with the students... and then let the students have it their way- if they realize week 4 that hey, there's no robot and the mentors aren't building it for us, maybe they'll get the motivation to start brainstorming themselves. If they make it further in the season, such as to ship date, maybe they'll want to get their act together with the 40 lbs of replacement parts, and a busy Thursday at regionals. I can't predict exactly what will happen, but at some point they will probably come to the realization that they have to start working themselves, and that will make a bigger difference to them than an entire season of prodding them to be productive might.

I know this could be read as sounding harsh and pessimistic, but it's really not meant to be. The mentors, who sound great, can still be around for support when the students are ready to start learning. FIRST is a program for students, so it shouldn't be up to the mentors to build a robot. The students will learn about responsibility if you leave it up to them to keep everything going. If, at the end of the season, no one has expressed any interest in really doing anything, then maybe you do want to let everyone know that you're not going to renew the sponsorship if no one is interested in being a part of this program anymore.

Hopefully this won't happen, and you can keep us updated on the progress throughout the season. Good luck with everything!

[Al Skierkiewicz]

I know in my heart that students benefit by being on a FIRST team. With that in mind, stopping a team is not an option. In a perfect world, everyone would want to work, would be self starting, interested in research, etc. We are not in a real world so we will need to teach them how work can be fun and rewarding, how they can see what needs to be done and do it, and how valuable research is. Have your students PM me with an electrical question and I will respond. Ask me anything and we will find out together.
All teams have good years and bad years, good students and not so good. We have to live with that. So where to go from here. It sounds like you need a plan. If the students don't come up with on their own, step in. Ask "What do we need first?" The Boy Scouts say "A failure to plan is a plan to fail". Sometimes you need to shake things up. Have each student make a statement on why they want to be on the team. What do they hope to get out of it, what do they want to do when they grow up. Anything to get them thinking of something. I know it sounds like I am putting a lot on your shoulders but you are the mentor who is interested in making this work. It might take a little more than you bargained for but I bet you can do it. Have you had strategy sessions, played the game with students as the robots, brainstormed on how to play the game and what other teams might do? How about a little team building, play ball, bowl, go for a walk together? Sometimes assigning responsibility works as well. From an outsider's point of view, and from the little you have related, it doesn't seem you are in big trouble just a little bump in the road. If you still don't have a driving base then that is today's goal. Get something driving and then everyone gets a chance to drive including the adults. Then get the driving pulling something by tomorrow. Then get ideas for a ball picker or whatever else your strategy has shown you should be doing.
As to fund raising, I would set a second event as a goal for fundraising. If you don't fundraise you don't travel to either event. There are students out there that are not yet in high school that are depending on what you do today. Good luck!

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

The following is a message from the original poster.
4) We have at most 12 students active- there are 30 signed up.

6) We go to 1 event. That's all we've ever been able to afford. The team talks about going to others- and never does any fund raising to get there.
7) My mentors are godsends- all 8 of them. They're dedicated and the come in and they all understand and share my frustrations. I do need more and have had talks about this with our company president and vp's in charge of engineering.
8) There is no team leader. I had a long heart to heart with several students about 'stepping up' to assume the mantle of command and no one has demonstrated it. Perhaps I'll address this tomorrow morning and ask who is the team leader.

I've quoted some things that you may wish to work on. If you have 12 active students and 30 signed up, contact the 18 that aren't active and see if they still want to be on the team. If not, then remove them from the roster.

For the 1 event, talking about others: if the team really wants to go to more than one event, talk to them about taking the initiative. They have to do the work if they want to go, whether it's sending letters or doing a car wash.

Your mentor situation is actually pretty good. For 12 active students, you really don't want more than about 4 more than you have. If you get more active students, go ahead and add more mentors.

Finally, the team leader. Definitely do this. I'd say see who the team leader is and officialize them, but if there isn't one, that's kind of hard.

Regarding that heart-to-heart, have it with all the students that you can talk to. But, ask them why they are on the team. If they're there just for the free food (if you have that) or just to hang out, see what they're interested in and get them working on that. If they're there just to get another club for their transcript, let them know that if they don't start doing something, the school will be asked not to put robotics on the transcript due to effective non-participation. That will motivate them to do one of two things: drop by themselves or get to work.

[ManicMechanic]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

(From original poster) Were I to remove every student that isn't motivated I would have 5 students. 5 students does not make a team. As I read your responses and weigh with what I know... then I look at your team sizes... we really do not have the motivation.

Five students make a very good team if it's an FTC or Vex team -- 10 max, 5 is optimal. I would take 5 committed, enthusiastic students over a dozen half-hearted ones any day.

FTC and Vex teams are very cost effective -- about $1500 to start up an FTC team, and less than $1000 to start up a Vex team. If you have extra funds, you can buy extra kits so you have a kit for every 2-3 students. The task is very manageable with small numbers, but if the numbers grow, you can always have multiple teams -- I know of schools that have 10 teams of 3-4 students each. But if the numbers fluctuate wildly, you can still have a program -- one or two teams in low years, 5-10 teams in popular years.

A couple years ago, I had a Vex team of 5. I asked if they were interested in approaching a nearby FRC team of 6 that had struggled with members the previous year to see if we could join. Their answer was, "No, we'd rather do Vex, because we all get to put our hands on the robots every time. If we join the other team, they might only let us watch." Since that time, the numbers in our club have doubled. Every time we add ~3 members, we buy another kit ($300-400) so that everyone gets a chance to build. The kits are reusable from year to year, so if we don't add members, our equipment costs are mainly to replace broken parts. We spend very little in years that we don't expand or go to the World Championship (about $300/year for administrative/tournament fees and replacement parts).

I've watched FRC teams from afar but never been on one, so I don't know how much of a let-down it would be to move from FRC to a smaller program. But it seems that having an FTC or Vex team would keep robotics alive at the school, which benefits the students, while requiring less money and mentoring. Perhaps with the smaller numbers, a few (but not all) of your mentors could be reassigned to another location without any robotics program at all. I'm sure that another school would be very grateful.

[synth3tk]

I'm not long-winded like everyone else here (not necessarily a bad thing!) but here's my 2-cents:

Five students is technically a team. Is it more than one person working together to get a set goal done? Yes. Is it the amount of students that you'd like? Probably not. But it is still a team.
I'm sure most of the people who've responded here have large teams because of the advice they're giving you here. Obviously something worked with their team, so I would jump at the chance to take up their words of wisdom.

I think it was two years ago, at the Buckeye regional, they introduced a team that was so inspirational. You want to know how they got started years before? One really interested student got help from one teacher. That was the team for that season. He learned how to code in LabVIEW, he did most of the machining, he essentially was the team. I don't remember which number it is, or how many member they have now, but he certainly didn't give up.

Take the time to think about the positive side-effects of keeping this team around. Just one of those should far out-weigh any number of "advantages" you may find in removing the team.