New Teacher, Old Team.

[Mushrooshi]

Well:

Our FTC team's adult sponsor has left our school to teach at a college, so we are getting a new teacher obviously. We speculated and stuff, but now I found out who the new teacher will be, but I am not sure if this will be good for the team.

She is going to be transferring from one school to another, which is our's. I talked to one of the students from her old school, who knew how she structured and laid out the team, and how efficient it was. They also competed in FTC, but basically, the way our teams were organized were completely, completely different:

My team:

Club based: Only 10 interested students joined by will, and eventually we got along with each other. Since it was a club, no students were forcibly assigned to do FTC, so we all enjoyed it.

[Almost] Zero structure: Instead of "You are the programmer, that is all you do", our team was really do what you feel like doing, if the team agrees, we add it on. Our 'roles' were titles and nothing else, I was listed as builder but I also did most of the design and a bit of programming. Our team loved it like this. In addition, the only leader roles were the two seniors, picked by seniority, but they TBH were just figureheads for the most part.

Student lead: Yea.

The new teacher's previous team:

Curriculum based: Pretty much the teams were determined by class periods, which is randomized, so it is a mixed bag as to how the teams will be performing and if they like/dislike each other. By the end of the season, we got along for the most part. Also, if it is curriculum based, chances are that half of the FTC season will be learning how to put things together, learning about gear ratios, and since it could be a required class not all students will enjoy it. You will have disinterested students.

Very [over?]structured: Since it was curriculum based, I would guess that to keep disinterested students doing stuff you need to have structure. Our team set no deadlines other than 'Competition date", but we still got things done ahead of schedule. I find that when you set no agenda, no schedule, from my experience it is actually much, much better as long as there are incentives. For her, she had set up judges and you had to present why you wanted to be builder, programmer, and you had set roles, although the student I talked with said sometimes it just melted and people just did whatever they want.

Teacher lead: Yea. Also, at FTC, the student I was talking with said that for his FTC team, some good drivers met at his school to practice driving when the teacher was sick, and since she didn't like that, she stopped the better drivers from driving as punishment, so the team didn't perform as well.

Ive done some robotics camps with this teacher, and so far I am unsure of what I feel with her leading our robotics team. I wonder if the team is able to keep the old team mechanics, and just work how we did. It seems kind of backwards, but any time a project would be structured, the structuring would never work, the schedules would be ignored, and even if it mattered as a grade it still wouldn't work. I have a feeling my team wouldn't like it much either.

I am doing a robotics program right now, and I would be able to discuss how our FTC team flowed and worked next week. However, I'm not sure if I should, since it might come off as rude, but I am worried about the fate of our team.