How do you recruit mentors?

[kenfox]

Team 3322 is a young team with big goals. We've worked hard and might make it into the Michigan championship again this year. In this hopeful calm before a storm, it seems like a good time to reflect on where we are and where we want to be.

So much depends on a team's mentors. We need people who have time and knowledge and like to work with students. It's a tough job.

How do you recruit mentors? Where do you find them? What do you do to keep them?

I wrote a blog post early in the season about why I'm a mentor, but I'm feeling like this isn't the best way to recruit and that there are as many motivations as there are mentors.
http://spin.atomicobject.com/2014/02...irst-robotics/

Robotics!

- Ken

[mathking]

Given your location in Ann Arbor, so you have many UM students as mentors? About half of our mentors are OSU engineering students. Ohio State has an organized FIRST mentoring program, and students can get credit for their mentoring. Many (but certainly not all) of ours have been students on an FRC team. As for other mentors, using your local Rotary Club can be a good avenue. There are probably companies represented in the Rotary Club that have employees who could be good FRC mentors.

[who716]

you could always have the mentors come to you, whenever you do outreach and presentations make sure you mention that you are always looking for help mentoring the students

[MamaSpoldi]

Many of our mentors come from parents who come to help when their kids are on the team and then they never leave because it is such a worthwhile experience.

Also, speaking from personal experience, if you get both a husband and wife involved it is a win-win situation... because there is no one waiting at home wondering if they will ever see their spouse again.

[aryker]

Our team relies primarily on parents for mentors as well. Every year on the first Monday of build season, we have a "parent night," where we show all the parents the game video and walk them through a typical build season. We then invite them to stay the rest of the night and sit in on our brainstorming sessions, and invite any who are interested to come back and mentor.

Another more recent source of mentors for us is team alumni. Your ability to do this may depend on your location relative to good universities. Since we are close to Indianapolis, team members can come back from Purdue University and IUPUI fairly easily to mentor.

[DjScribbles]

You could try Nerd Sniping, which is how I got involved.

A mom at our church was talking to my wife about how their robotics team had problems at state because of programming, so my wife volunteers me to help out.

Once I actually met with the team later that year, they had a problem they were having in preparation for an off-season event (completely unrelated to programming, but we all know it doesn't really matter what the problem is), I was hooked on FIRST in about 10 minutes, simply by helping them solve the problem.


The moral of the story: FIRST impressions are important, and if someone feels that they are contributing something of value, they are going to also feel like a member of the team.

Also, ditto on the spouse involvement. My wife is an engineering grad student, we're both hooked on this program, but it would be very very difficult to commit the time we do if we weren't sharing the experience.

[WynS]

We are always actively recruiting mentors. A lot of them are parents with students on the team, some are alumni (parents and students), and some are people we recruit from just talking to them about how great this program is.

One thing that we've learned is that you need to work as hard retaining mentors as you do students. Adults tend to have other things that they do in addition to work so if they show up and can't figure out what to do, they don't come back. We try to set expectations up front just like we do with students. You need to be willing to show up for a while and observe, get to know the students, and figure out where you can help. This may take a few meetings but if they keep coming back, they will eventually figure out how to work with the students and feel like they are making a contribution.

As we grow, we are beginning to have the bandwidth to do more things than just building a robot. There are opportunities on a team for people to help mentor students in areas like awards, project management and other team skills. A lot of people think if they are not engineers that they can't help. I am an engineer by training but most of what I do to help the team is team management.

I also agree about getting couples and families involved. My husband and two of my sons are also mentors and this is something that we do together.

I think that one of the best ways you can foster mentors is to work on building relationships. Once mentors start to connect with students and other mentors, they keep coming back. I also find that having more mentors encouraging and checking in on students, makes the students more successful and allows them to accomplish much more.

Good luck on this.

[MamaSpoldi]

Originally Posted by aryker

Our team relies primarily on parents for mentors as well. Every year on the first Monday of build season, we have a "parent night," where we show all the parents the game video and walk them through a typical build season. We then invite them to stay the rest of the night and sit in on our brainstorming sessions, and invite any who are interested to come back and mentor.

Another more recent source of mentors for us is team alumni. Your ability to do this may depend on your location relative to good universities. Since we are close to Indianapolis, team members can come back from Purdue University and IUPUI fairly easily to mentor.

Excellent point. We have had our team alumni come back and help during their school breaks... as well as after they graduate. In addition we have been approached by alumni of other teams who have moved to the area after graduating from college. These "outside" alumni are also an excellent resource because they bring a different perspective to the team which can be like a breath of fresh air bringing in new ideas and opportunities.

[kenfox]

Originally Posted by aryker

Our team relies primarily on parents for mentors as well. Every year on the first Monday of build season, we have a "parent night," where we show all the parents the game video and walk them through a typical build season. We then invite them to stay the rest of the night and sit in on our brainstorming sessions, and invite any who are interested to come back and mentor.

We do something similar at the start of the school year when we are recruiting students. Parent participation is pretty good, although we end up being weak in some areas (mechanical design and shop skills are rare for us). We also have excellent college students, but they have busy schedules.

Do most teams have a core group of mentors who stay year-to-year and form the heart of the team? Is it just luck that you find people like that?

This year we split into varsity and junior varsity squads. That seemed to help reduce the stress on the mentors. Most of us worked with sub-teams of 4 to 6 students. Hopefully it will be easier to add new part-time mentors too.

[Monochron]

Originally Posted by MamaSpoldi

come from parents who come to help when their kids are on the team

Yeah, but I think the question is how you get them to come. Our 35ish students have a ton of parents and would love to get them motivated to be involved with the team.

[mathking]

I think that getting parents involved has to start with getting them there. If you start by asking each parent to help out one time during the build season as an extra pair of eyes, I have found that most of them will do so. Some of those are going to get excited and you can tell them they are welcome to keep coming to help. Asking them to come once to help also lets you see how they interact with the team and see whether they would be a good fit.

[Libby K]

Originally Posted by Monochron

Yeah, but I think the question is how you get them to come. Our 35ish students have a ton of parents and would love to get them motivated to be involved with the team.

Mandatory parent meeting. Seriously, it's worked wonders for 1923.

If you want to be on the team, you (the student) and at least one parent/guardian has to show up to our Parents' meeting.

At this meeting, we hand out a copy of the team handbook. Then we walk through:

• What FIRST is, Gracious Professionalism, etc.
• The programs we do (FLL/FTC mentoring, outreach, FRC)
• Events and travel plans for the school year
• Team rules & regulations, including behavior expectations
• Schedule for shop & safety training days
• Roles for parents, siblings, and other family supporters

Then we make sure that each parent/kid combo signs the last page of the handbook, and gives it in. Without that meeting, and the signed page, you're not on the team.

(Obviously, accommodations are made for people who can't make it, we'll work one on one with families who can't schedule it in, etc)

The most important part of that meeting for us is letting the parents know that we do need and welcome their help. Since we don't build in the school, we need parent chaperones to man the front door of our build site, bring food for meals during build, chaperone the buses, etc.

It sounds harsh on paper, but we also state that if your student wants to travel with the team (we're in the Mid-Atlantic Region, so none of the districts are actually close to us - all our events require bus & hotel), a parent MUST sign up for some sort of helper-slot in our calendar, at least once. Bringing dinner, running front-door check-in... something. Two hours of your parent's time, or a little bit of $ to help feed the kids at the build site. We also have a 'parent steering committee' for those who opt to be more highly involved, that helps organize this effort.

Parents warm up to this pretty quickly - and we always make sure that parents know they are invited to ALL our events. Whether they come on the bus or drive on their own, parents are welcome to sit with the team and help cheer us on. Once they're at one event? They're hooked, just like the kids are. Our parent committee is bigger than our student leaders committee at this point!

It took quite a while to get to this point, but now that we're here we couldn't see our team running any other way. Parents are a great source of energy for our team. We love our MidKnight Moms & Dads! (and grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and siblings... well, you get it.)

[Steven Smith]

This is different for everyone, but for me, I work at a tech company with tens of thousands of engineers in Dallas, Texas. Our team is actually had to avoid recruiting new mentors for a period last year so we can properly develop the skills of our young team without overwhelming the students, budget, etc.

I recommend having a 30sec to 2min elevator pitch specific to what FIRST can do for someone as a mentor. For me, that pitch revolves around
- Do you like to build things? We have a budget to build all the cool projects many engineers do at home, but with high school students.
- Ever thought of joining a HackerSpace/MakerSpace? That is basically what FIRST can be for mentors in the offseason.
- Feel like your day job doesn't allow you to continue technical development as an engineer? Challenge yourself by relearning engineering topics. There is no better way to humble yourself than to try to explain a complex topic you "somewhat remember" to a high school student.
- And oh ya by the way... you can legitimately make a difference in the lives of students and our community. There are alot of equally time consuming hobbies my coworkers have (golfing, video games, etc.) that don't have the added benefit of actually helping people, and are arguably no more fun.

Honestly, I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to be a mentor. The fools don't know what they are missing.

Steven

[liviamarrs]

Lack of mentors has caused some of the largest problems on our team. Recently, we have been fixing the 'student run' program of past years to a much more equal share of power between mentors and students. The benefits from this are amazing and keep appearing, but we've also been faced with the fact that we just do not have enough support for our mentors. The recent build and competition seasons proved that, and I am worried that no one is going to have any energy when we get back from World's to continue the growth of our year round program.

So we've recently ramped up trying to find new mentors. But, I've noticed a trend in our attempts. Generally we go to a meeting or event, we make the sell, we get the contact or a guarantee of a follow up...and then nothing happens. How can I make our search for mentors more efficient?

[philso]

Originally Posted by Libby K

Mandatory parent meeting. Seriously, it's worked wonders for 1923.

If you want to be on the team, you (the student) and at least one parent/guardian has to show up to our Parents' meeting.

At this meeting, we hand out a copy of the team handbook. Then we walk through:

• What FIRST is, Gracious Professionalism, etc.
• The programs we do (FLL/FTC mentoring, outreach, FRC)
• Events and travel plans for the school year
• Team rules & regulations, including behavior expectations
• Schedule for shop & safety training days
• Roles for parents, siblings, and other family supporters

Then we make sure that each parent/kid combo signs the last page of the handbook, and gives it in. Without that meeting, and the signed page, you're not on the team.

(Obviously, accommodations are made for people who can't make it, we'll work one on one with families who can't schedule it in, etc)

The most important part of that meeting for us is letting the parents know that we do need and welcome their help. Since we don't build in the school, we need parent chaperones to man the front door of our build site, bring food for meals during build, chaperone the buses, etc.

It sounds harsh on paper, but we also state that if your student wants to travel with the team (we're in the Mid-Atlantic Region, so none of the districts are actually close to us - all our events require bus & hotel), a parent MUST sign up for some sort of helper-slot in our calendar, at least once. Bringing dinner, running front-door check-in... something. Two hours of your parent's time, or a little bit of $ to help feed the kids at the build site. We also have a 'parent steering committee' for those who opt to be more highly involved, that helps organize this effort.

Parents warm up to this pretty quickly - and we always make sure that parents know they are invited to ALL our events. Whether they come on the bus or drive on their own, parents are welcome to sit with the team and help cheer us on. Once they're at one event? They're hooked, just like the kids are. Our parent committee is bigger than our student leaders committee at this point!

It took quite a while to get to this point, but now that we're here we couldn't see our team running any other way. Parents are a great source of energy for our team. We love our MidKnight Moms & Dads! (and grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and siblings... well, you get it.)

This is not so different from what the USA Swim teams require, at least in the Houston area.

Stress to the parents that their children get much more out of any programs that the parents are direct involved with. Over the last 5-6 years, the swim teams in our YMCA league where the parents are consistently involved tend to perform much better than the teams where the parents treat the team as an aquatic day care.

Some parents may be intimidated and think they cannot help your team because they are not engineers/programers or are not technical. Explain that there are many non-technical roles such as arranging for food, travel etc. for the team. One does not need to "be technical" to help proofread a Chairman's essay or help practice for the Chairman's interview.