Application To Join A Team

[Jon Stratis]

This is obviously a fairly touchy subject, but I feel the need to rant on it a little

Yes, in an ideal world every student interested will be part of a team. But this is less than an ideal world. My team has around 20 students in it each year, and we can't safely manage that many students with any less than 5 mentors. There's simply too many things in a shop (with saws, drills, and other things that could cause serious damage) that can go wrong, and one person can't have their eyes everywhere at once. We accept everyone we can get, but our first and largest priority is safety. I'm not sure what we'd do if our team size suddenly doubled. Probably celebrate in public, and cry ourselves to sleep at night trying to figure out how to handle it all.

Yes, there is a lot of stuff people can do on the team. However, how many people can you really support with work throughout the season? Even if you go for all the awards and do all of the "side" work like animation and website, you get to a point where you simply have too many people on a task for it to go smoothly. You can only fit so many people in a shop or around a robot. Each team needs to be able to determine what the appropriate size is for their team - a size they can successfully manage and run. If that means they have to turn some people away each year, then that's tough. Really tough. How do you make that decision?

Well, you start with an application process. You put questions on it and list your expectations for the team. You do your best to design the application to ensure you have as many kids involved as you can manage, and that you're picking the kids who will best support the team throughout the season.

Lets play some hypothetical number games here. Lets say you've determined that you can only support 50 kids on your team, but you have 100 that apply every year. Well, if you require that they're not involved in any other activities during the build season, you can weed out basketball players, theater members, etc. Say that's 30 kids. Now, you require their attendance in off-season events, workshops, and summer camps. You've just lost another 10 kids. You require certain grade levels. There's another 5. By requiring these things, you're helping to narrow down the selection pool to a manageable level, without having the possibility of "playing favorites". This gives you something very clear and obvious to point to when parents complain, and you can have good, scripted descriptions of why each item is necessary. For example, "I'm sorry Mrs. Jones, but we had to deny Timmy's application because he plays basketball. As I'm sure you understand, Basketball takes up a lot of time, but so does robotics. We meet for about 20 hours a week, and many of those meetings conflict with the Basketball practice schedule. With so many students applying to the robotics team each year, we want to make sure that we can provide an environment for those who can be truly dedicated and get the most out of this opportunity."

So, what about fee's? Our team has a fee. A lot of teams have fees. There are fee's to play on sports teams, be a member of the marching band, debate club, or other organizations. They're called activity fees and are fairly common for a lot of different things at schools, especially those that cost money to operate. If you ask for a $200 activity fee each year, just tell the students and parents what they get for it - several hundred hours of interaction, teaching, and experience with professional engineers. You won't even get that paying tens of thousands of dollars each year at college. Most schools also have funds or other ways for financially challenged students to join teams.


In short, how teams manage who joins and who doesn't is really up to the team. There are way to many considerations to be able to look in from outside and say they're doing it wrong. We have some guidelines for students in terms of being allowed to travel with the team or letter, and it's really tough every time you have to give a student "bad news". Just making the decisions is tough. That's why we build our guidelines to be as black and white as possible, which appears to be what you saw.

[Mongai]

Our team is built on interest. Our coaches founded this team based on the stance that everyone should get a chance to learn about machining, design, and programming as well as other skills that make a business work like public relations and media. It wasn't founded to win every regional or to win every award (although it is a goal our team sets and meets almost every year). If a person doesn't seem to be interested at all, they usually leave within the first couple days of our meetings, so it fixes itself.

Of course, that's what FIRST is all about: to spur interest.

[Garret]

I am noticing two main groups. The first group thinks that FIRST is about inspiration, from what I have interpreted their stance is that any student should be able to gain the benefits of the program regardless of competing time interests. The second group seems to be looking at it from a logistics and more pragmatic point of view. I see the first group as still believing in the more, for lack of a better term, "Utopian" interpretation of FIRST as an organization; as a result it seem that they strive to meet this goal. I believe the second group holds the same beliefs as well, and I also believe that they strive to meet that goal. However I think that what is forgotten about the second group is that a majority of them are people who have volunteered countless hours of their time to give these opportunities to students, and in my opinion asking them to do more than what they are willing to do is wrong and selfish.

I will use my team as an example again. This past season, we had issue with a student who felt as if he had been wronged because he was not given a leadership position he wanted, there were several reasons for this, however, that same student had not been to a single meeting the entire fall (they were in marching band which conflicts with the schedule). The student who received the position was a student who had been to every meeting up until then. I think that it would have been unfair to the student who did the work if we had given the position to someone else who hadn't been there. In a sense I think this situation is similar to the one the OP mentioned. From these types of experiences dealing with students (and parents) I have seen that a lot of them want to get all of the benefit of the program without doing any of the real work that it takes (many of them are completely ignorant of the time and money it takes to run a team).

When I first joined CD I would have been on the opposite side of this arguing about how terrible these teams are that don't allow everyone on the team who wants to be. I have since learned how naive and inexperienced I was to believe something like that. I feel confident saying that there is not one FIRST team out there that has the goal of uninspiring students.

[AdamHeard]

Originally Posted by Garret

However I think that what is forgotten about the second group is that a majority of them are people who have volunteered countless hours of their time to give these opportunities to students, and in my opinion asking them to do more than what they are willing to do is wrong and selfish.

You are wise beyond your years.

[daniel_dsouza]

If you were in Arizona, I'd invite him to join our team!

Back to the OP's question. Our club is based out of our school, and we therefore have to abide by school rules (like the school is completely closed on Sundays). The main rule is that, unlike school sports, "[our club] cannot cut anybody from the club based on qualifiers or tryouts." Our teacher/sponsor can ask people to leave and never come back, but only if he as a compelling reason (damage of property, danger to himself and others, etc.)

Club rules aside, I(club president) would never put restrictions on who could join our team. I have found that some of our best members have varied interests, and are often called away because of band, sports, or volunteer work. Anyone can apply to be an officer, or be part of the drive team. And despite being a lower budget club, we don't demand any payment. Although we do ask that club members take advantage of Arizona's school-friendly tax credit laws. (you give us $400, and get your money back from taxes.) While our nonexistent sieve for new members might hinder our chances of building the best robot, the important thing is that our members benefit from the FIRST experience and take something away that will help them in their future lives.

I hope your friend finds a team.

Disclaimer: the situation for our team is that we are understaffed, even with two schools feeding our team.

[EricH]

I'm going to go hypothetical for a minute. If I was a team leader, this is what I would have, either on the application or in a team handbook that everyone had to read before joining (and trust me, there would be a team handbook!). Turning away students would only happen if there was a severe need to do so (and in such a case, I would try to point them to another FRC/FTC/VRC team in the area).

1) Contact information/Emergency contact information. So I can get in touch with you, or call for your parents, should I need to.
2) What other activities you're in. (Who do I need to coordinate with on whether you should show up at robotics or take an excused absense?)
3) What part(s) of the team are you interested in?
4) Do you agree to the team rules laid out in the team handbook?

And the team handbook would include the following:

• Grade policy. Basically, if you're failing classes, you're going to be spending team meetings studying.
• Conduct policy. (curfews, expellable behavior, dress code at competitions)
• Attendance policy. In essence, attend a certain percentage of meetings, or have a valid excuse to not be at said meetings (other activity, medical/family emergency, major project in school)
• Travel requirements--take everyone, assuming that they aren't under grade/attendance/conduct restrictions, and if there's a major conduct violation, the offender gets sent home early.

Again, this is what I'd put in an application/handbook. Fees and scholarships and the like would ideally be dealt with by fundraising participation (set out in the handbook).



For the OP: the only things that I saw in that summary that I would object to were the strict attendance/commitment (can't leave early/can't have another activity) and the fee to join. If the attendance/commitment were on a case-by-case basis--that is, you can leave early if you have a good reason, and we have an issue with this activity you're in--I wouldn't have a problem with it. (If it's school policy that students can only be in one activity at a time... well, I don't think that school would be too popular with parents.) The fee to join I can see in some cases; it would depend on the fee. But by stating it as stated, it does seem a bit inflexible.

[Euriiko]

Hi everyone,

To begin with, I am personally a member of this team whose policies you are bashing. I am here to address your concerns.

I have been on this team for 3 years, and never has anyone been removed because they were involved in sports, band, choir, etc. I have a friend that is greatly involved in both band, choir, and theater. The mentors understand and appreciate every single moment she can spare for Robotics. We never prevent anyone from joining the team because they are busy.

Rather, we let each member be the judge of their own schedule. One of my friends was balancing AP US History, Robotics, Piano, and Business Professionals of America. The team did not ask her to leave. She participated rarely, but we did not dismiss her. She eventually decided that it was too busy and stressful for her, so she resigned. Resigned.Not kicked off.

Also, about the long 6 pages, I agree, that might have not been necessary, but this was written by one of our teachers. She is a wonderful woman who does her best to stay organized. 6 pages suits her. She writes it like a code of conduct, I realize. And I hope you who are reading this understand that a code of conduct is meant for the good of the team. And be aware that many school districts' code of conducts are 50-100 pages long.

When you said, we should accept everyone,

"not just those who you think keep the image of your team you want"

I need to clarify something.
Our team comes from a huge public school with about 1700 students. Each year, we have many, many applications, far too many to be able to admit every student. Why limit? There are several reasons.
1) We have only a few mentors, and the mentor to student ratio would be unbalanced, if we were to let everyone in. Too many students, in this case, would not learn efficiently and the team wouldn't function well. (Imagine one mentor to 20 students! "mentor" itself implies a small group of mentees)
2) We do not have enough funds. You have suggested we find more sponsors. This is, unfortunately, easier said and done. As of now, our Public Relations team has been recovering from losing half its group to graduation, leaving them with half the hands they originally have. As for me, I would love to find more sponsors. Please don't judge the team in general; please consider the individual aspect. I really wish other teams would share their own business and entrepreneurship plans that they have; that is one area I admit we are lacking in. I wish someone in this thread would post helpful suggestions, rather than repetitive criticism.
3) We need to see who really has their heart in the matter. You all know as well as I do that there are far more people who do not care about science and math and technology that those who do. My team is eager to change that. But doesn't it make sense to change 40 students' minds about science and technology than hardly change 90 students' minds? Just food for thought.

Our mentors are extremely kind and patient. Last year, my parents were late to pick me up almost every night of the week. They waited and talked with me. Of course they'd reprimand me for being late to leave, but no one ever gets dismissed from that. Please realize that what you read on the paper is not how it actually is. We make exceptions. I'm genuinely sorry about how harsh that application may have come across. I had no control over how it was written as a member. I wish members were able to write it, because as direct participants, we know the real story.

To punish a child because of their parents or prior obligation is a slap in the face to FIRST.

As I said before, this is not true. We do not punish students because of their parents or prior obligation. We have emails requesting additional help for serving/arranging meals, or transportation to certain events. Unfortunately, our school does not support our team in such a way that we would be independent of parental help. It's nothing we can control.
Also, I have taken Chinese classes on Saturdays, for two years of my three years in Robotics. I had to miss the majority of Saturdays, the most important build day of the week. No one scolded me or reprimanded me. The mentors are very understanding. They know that we have other things that matter to us. It would be a folly to assume that Robotics took precedent over everything else in life.

Also, please don't interpret the parent section as you did,

The parents section pretty much asks,"How much time are you willing to take out of your life so your kid can join our team?"

My mom and dad have four kids including me, one who is autistic. All of us are involved in various activities, including piano, violin, flute, tennis, gymnastics, Chinese school, and dance. It is nearly impossible for either my mom or my dad to help out in fundraisers. This is no "punishment". To have punishment is ridiculous. The extent of how much my parents can contribute to the team has never been a limiting factor, and never will.

But for a child to be denied because of that, is simply ungracious.

I do understand and empathize with your point of view on my team's application. But please pause for a moment and consider how you have handled your anger and frustration.
It might have been better to contact my team about our policies, rather than interpreting the application yourself. I have reread the application, and I can see how it must have sounded to you. I apologize. I wish I could have been in charge of writing the application, so it was more close to the true way we run things around here.

If the team wanted something in specific, we did a fundraiser for it. These techniques teach kids a good work ethic.

Yes, we fundraiser year-round, as much as possible, because we know how things are tight these days. We want to reduce student cost as much as possible. And to be honest, Robotics has indeed strengthened my work ethic. Some of the best memories I have are formed during team fundraising. It's a kind of team bonding that also gives us practice on teamwork. It's also really fun.

In a public school, how dare you put a fee on joining an EDUCATIONAL organization. The kids on your team are NOT I repeat are NOT a fundraiser. To exploit them for more money is simply outlandish.

Sorry, but exploiting? I feel that is rather harsh for you to say, considering you do not know my team personally. The negative connotation you have used has me almost on the verge of tears. We can't help it if our school doesn't take Robotics as seriously as we do! It's not in our power, please realize that!

I am just so devastated that your girlfriend's little brother may not even try out for my team, due to the negative impression you have. Your impression is not wrong, I just feel you have have overreacted and judged my team just at the surface level. Please don't judge a team by its application. Have you talked to any of my team members? My mentees? Have you even looked at our website?

If it's not too late, please tell your girlfriend's little brother to apply for my team. It's an amazing team, the reason why I want to pursue engineering in college. It's allowed me to expand my horizons, to visualize, to dream, to see the world in an entirely new light. I've made some great friends on my team, friends that support me as we all learn together. If I could live a thousand lifetimes, I would spend it with Robotics, trying out every single department, trying out mechanical build, electrical build, field build, programming, public relations, CAD design, and more. I love my team.

I am also happy for your team, that you have the miraculous capacity to be able to accept everyone who applies. It breaks my heart when we cannot accept everyone who applies due to our lack of mentors and funds. It's not something we can change right away, but something we are working towards improving.

If you know of anyone who is interested in mentoring, please contact our team. I respect JustAThought's refusal to not release team names, but I feel that it would have been better to be straightforward and know exactly who is who. If you would like to ask me any questions, my email is kelly_yu_2013@yahoo.com.

[bduddy]

^ Euriiko: While you ask the OP not to judge a team by its application, that is an obvious first point of contact and it seems like you would agree that there were parts on it that 1) do not properly represent your team and 2) the OP understandably found objectionable. While I'm sure that the teacher who wrote that applciation meant well, is it possible that you might produce one that better reflects your team by bringing these types of concerns to her attention, and perhaps by having your whole team work together on a new one?

[brennonbrimhall]

Every team has the duty to strike the right balance between having a productive, respectful, and robot-oriented atmosphere and reaching out.

I won't lie and say that these are easy choices to make. Each team has to make these decisions for themselves – every team is unique. However, I would also be lying if I said that either unregulated team membership or stifling applications are the best routes.

With Team 20's 80 some odd students, we have a difficult challenge of promoting intra-team communication, and getting all hands on deck. We are expecting even more students next year. Don't get me wrong – it's great to have that challenge, and it's wonderful to have that many interested and committed students with us. Inevitably, though, by build season, we boil down to a core group of people who are willing to put in the time and the effort.

On one hand, it would make sense to have an interview process or to have them get letters of recommendation from a non-family member. But in my case, I might never have had the chance to catch FIRST-fever if that had been in place. There will always be some who will go the extra mile, and those that don't. Knowing that, making the balance will always be a challenge that no team should have the slightest degree of complacency for.

We have awesome mentors – and from my perspective, it would be the utmost disrespect and disservice to them to not be the most committed, dedicated, and ready-to-learn student I can be. I am amazed at how much time each of them set aside from their comfortable lives to spend time with a bunch of crazy teenagers. I think every student has a duty to be as involved as they can.

When all is said and done, FIRST is an awesome experience about a dedicated group of professionals and students setting aside something good for something far better and much more rewarding.

[Jeff Waegelin]

Since this is clearly a discussion that needs to be taken off-line between the two parties, and also a violation of the anonymous accounts rule, I am closing this thread. If anyone wants to have a general discussion about the merits of applications that doesn't involve airing dirty laundry anonymously, please do so in a new thread.

[Billfred]

Some points:

1) Anonymous accounts are not allowed in the ChiefDelphi rules. Use the FIRST-A-Holics Anonymous forum for situations where divorcing one's name is necessary. (That's my moderator hat on.)

2) I can think of many reasons to deny a student membership on an FRC team. Much like you mention, we have had students there who were acting a fool, whose grades weren't good enough, and so on. Other students, much as we'd love to have them, were just too booked up with other things to be considered full-fledged team members. Some teams may just not be as able to handle part-timers (for example, some teams build in restricted areas that require badges and special permission).

3) How dare anyone dictate how another team does business. I want to get as many deserving kids competing in FRC as possible, but FIRST is not a right. It's hard work to organize a team, especially if the district or primary sponsor has rules that must be adhered to. (For example, our team can't fundraise until August.)

If you've got an issue or a better way, take it up with the leadership of the team. Or failing that, find another team that's willing to take them in. Some teams have more flexibility.

[Anupam Goli]

For what each team is, it depends on the interpretation of what FIRST is.

For some, FRC is a sport. For others, it's only a hobby or interest. For those who treat it as a sport, it makes sense to restrict entry and exit. I know some Michigan teams hold tryouts for their team. 1717 only allows the seniors in the engineering academy to be on the team. It really depends on interpretation. Heck, I would want to treat FRC more as a sport, and make it restrict. There's an inspiration in being rejected, because it makes you try harder the next time.


As for termination, FRC is a very time-consuming venture. I'm not surprised at the stringency of the requirements. I was nearly booted out of my seat as president of the Computer Honor Society because i couldn't attend any meetings due to the FRC season. It's very time consuming. It's not just 6 weeks, it's a year long process. During my Senior year of high school, I only had time for FRC and nothing else, because I took it seriously and wanted to improve.

As for entry fees, it makes sense. Band has them. At my school, all clubs and sports had dues. The Robotics team was no different. The dues were a way to weed some people out. We had over 100 members join, but only 50 or so dues paying members because we set the dues at $50. This weeds out those who just wish to write Robotics on their college app and provides the initial funds to register for the season. It's not wrong to have fees. All high schools in my county had them for each grade level.

Keeping an open-door policy is good, but sometimes it doesn't bring the best results. If you keep it a bit closed, efficiency and productivity goes up. It makes sense, and it's all interpretation.

[Ekcrbe]

I think this can be turned around and looked at the other way:

If you* can't make it to enough (enough is subjective) meetings and team activities, then why should he/she be allowed to be considered part of the team? As Billfred pointed out, FIRST is not a right, it's a privilege, and to add on to JosephC about our team, you can't play winter sports and be on the team. It's not because we don't want you, it just doesn't work. There are always some exceptions to be made for special circumstances, but being on the team means being with the team. Plus, if you can't be at the majority of required team activities, are you even learning anything? It would be a sleight to FIRST and deceit on your part to claim FIRST experience without actually going through the whole process. Any other sport requires that you be involved and academically and behaviorally eligible. FIRST teams should hold their students to even higher standards. Our team put up a big list on the whiteboard in our main meeting room of priorities, to remind everyone that FIRST comes after school. They say FIRST looks good on college resumes, but you have to get to college (i.e. graduate high school) for that to matter.

*Obviously, you is not directed at anyone, but rather the hypothetical subject of this situation.

Sorry for my very long-windedness and disorganization, but I hate leaving out thoughts.

P.S. If it was my team that was the subject of the OP, I would feel attacked and hurt by this post. This was a scathing and unprovoked attack that is unquestionably leaps and bounds farther outside the ideals of FIRST than any acceptance/denial program any team has. Imagine your team being the recipient of a post like this. If you think you need to be anonymous so that your team is not aligned with these thoughts, what does that mean of your thoughts? To me, it seems to mean that it would be embarrassing for your team if the world knew one of theirs believes something like this, and therefore this information should not be public.

[Garret]

My team has struggled with this issue a lot. We have had the policy where we let anyone join the team and be a part of it. That policy turned out to be a problem in that we had a whole bunch of people who would show up maybe once a week or a few times the whole season and then expect us to update them and make it like they had been there the whole time. If the team had sufficient mentors to make that happen I would be glad to accommodate this, however, when you have 35 kids at a meeting and 3 mentors that type of thing is unacceptable.

In addition to this, FIRST offers students a great deal of benefits in terms of applying to colleges and scholarships. I think its unfair that a student who shows up to 1 meeting a week to be given the same opportunities (in terms of scholarships) as the student who has put countless hours of work into FIRST. In my mind that is not fair.

I will add a final point about my own team. My dad was the main administrative, technical, and business mentor (basically the only mentor there all the time) for the past 4 years on team 691. He does all of this during what little free time he has left after doing his regular job, which is being the one-man patent department for a micro-device company. During the build season he has to balance work and an entire FRC team on his own. If a team member expects my dad to be at every meeting, yet they aren't willing to make the program a priority I find it offensive and disrespectful. Its like saying oh, golf is a real team, robotics is just a club.

I apologize if my post is offensive to you (or anyone else), but frankly I am really quite offended by your posts.
(Also your team application you described sounds a whole lot like my teams application)

[Radical Pi]

I can understand where all this is coming from. While we want to give this experience to as many people as possible, for two years now our team has been faced with the prospect of being forced to set a hard limit on the number of people in the team as we've grown to 60+ students. Luckily, both years the district has been gracious enough to donate the salary for an extra teacher to supervise us, and we haven't had to go through with any cuts.

Our process for handling this kind of thing is to conduct interviews with the new potential members. If we do ever have to perform cuts, the decision will probably be based off of what they could potentially contribute to the team and how much time they could dedicate. I'll admit that saying no to a potential member is an extremely difficult thing to do, but sometimes it simply can't be avoided.

The only "dues" we have for our members is that they participate in fundraisers and demonstrations during the offseason. We also have academic requirements during the season, though those are usually of the form "take half a week to cool off and catch up". We also require that students pay a part of the travel costs for any event they go to, though scholarships are available. Often we also have more students wanting to go to each regional than we can take, and in those cases the final decision is made based on contribution during the build season.

One related question I'd like to pose to the forum: In the recent years the district has been pushing hard for us to improve the diversity of our team (build a 50% boy/girl ratio, recruit more underrepresented minorities, etc.). How do your teams factor that kind of thing in when/if deciding who to turn away from the team?