Managing Grades and Responsibilities While On A FIRST Team

[JohnBoucher]

Robots will consume you if you are not careful. We maintain a strict if you are not passing everything, we don't want you there policy. We stress from day 1 that you need to balance everything. We also stress that learning to balance FIRST and life is an important lesson you will benefit from.

We are run by a parents committee and not by a educator or the school, so we bring different management philosophies to the day to day of running the team. It's a tough balance. We are more performance focused with benchmarks that need to be meet, than what the students see on a day to day while in school. It's necessary because our time is limited.

We found that team activities outside of robots helps them to balance their lives. They go out as a group to laser tag, paint ball, snow boarding and go to concerts.