our team also has a education contract, you cant be failing/near failing any classes, otherwise you will be suspended/booted from the team. as well we have a study room in the hotel, and on the bus we have manditory 1hour study session. I missed 8 days of school due to robotics (2 regionals, 2 extra build days), and my math mark kinda got hit, but FIRST helped me realize how much i enjoy engineering, so that i NEED to do well in my classes if i want to reach my goals.
-kevin
Team 538 has the “C” or better in every class to be able to travel. We had a number that couldn’t travel to Nationals (because they chose not to make up work they missed when we went to regionals). As a teacher sponsor I check each members grades at least once a week to stay on top of it. Some of the members were shocked when they couldn’t travel but next year I bet they will make sure to do all make-up work.
604 has made sure that grades and schoolwork are first. If grades begin falling, then a person simply is not allowed to participate in robotics events, including regionals and Nationals. This has been a great motivator to raise grades.
I have to agree with Tom here. During the six week build season in FIRST I have learned more than I have all year in both my English and history classes combined. What I have learned from being in FIRST is going to be a lot more useful in my life than being able to spit out seemingly random dates of events and describe the personality of a fictional character in a novel (unless of course I end up on a show like Jeopardy and a question like that comes up). I would also like to mention that my grades actually went up during build season, and have since dropped down again.
Although grades don’t always accurately display what a person actually takes away from schoo,l or FIRST for that matter, they are still important because they are one of the key elements to your future. Even if you learn tons of information about life and school subjects through FIRST, if your grades are low it will severly affect what colleges want to accept you and/or keep you. Our team also has a grades policy, and i think it’s a good thing that we do. I know that i’ve made extra sure i stay on top of my game so that i can stay on our team, and i’m sure FIRST inspired other students on teams with these policies in a similar way.
Chief Delphi has always had standards when it comes to grades. As stated in our team handbook, all students are required to maintain and improve on a min. 2.5 GPA. It is also stated that any student that gets an “E” grade in any class is placed on plan a of assistance or dropped from the team.
Every day of “away” activity includes formal study time for all students to work on classroom assignments or generally read ahead on materials. Our mentors and teachers facilitate study groups whenever possible. We schedule after school tutorials and work with teaching staff to make sure all team members are working to their best ability.
Most, if not all of our students are on the National Honor Society, and rank very high in class ranking - not an accident - just very hard work and constant attention from the team coaches.
Ahhh… but yes, some students loose focus on what this is all about and suffer as a result.
As “head coach” and a teacher, I regularly send emails to all faculty with team members names and ask them to let me know if any student has attendance or grade “issues.” I get several responses every time. This is taken into consideration when determining who travels and who doesn’t. But, we’ve also taken into consideration the student, the class, and the effort being put forth. Sometimes a student is just “in over his/her head” in a class that’s too difficult for their ability and as long as they are putting forth an effort they MAY still be able to travel. Some miss a regional or two (or nationals).
This year we started “study table” in the hotel, but not until Nationals and not until several members were behind in getting makeup work done. We ask soooo much of our school and faculty and staff that we were not about to tolerate students being behind in work because of FIRST. We need all the positive image PR we can get!
I thought the team would really “rebel” about the study tables, but it was amazing to see them all working on something and even helping each other out (teaching is the best way to master a concept). While not everyone “needed” the study time, everyone used it in some way and I think it was a good team bonding experience.
Next season we’ll incorporate “study table time” into the build season at school. I’m thinking an hour of study table 2-3 days a week and then work sessions (some of our mentors can’t be there when school gets out anyway).
I hope next year that no one on our school staff has the need to respond to my emails!
The photo in this link is a picture I took the eve of Kick Off this year. One of our alum’s grandparents have graciously hosted the team in Houston for the past few years. This year almost every single team member pulled out their calculators and homework for Physics while they were waiting for us to figure out the Charades categories. When Charades was over they went back to Physics. There is an equal set of calculators and books on the floor next to the table. They did this on their own, the rest of us ate cookies.
http://www.lasarobotics.org/gallery/view_photo.php?set_albumName=album01&id=06_Kick_Off0049
Charades … Physics … Cookies …Grandma’s house…, sounds like paradise to me! :]
come join us -
after the first round of Charades, the team wanted a second round and one of the categories they wanted clues for was - are you ready - TOOLS - yupyupyup - I laughed way too hard.
Mos tof the CircuitRunners are in teh magnet program at our School. This is one of the toughest programs in the country and our magnet was ranked number 5 in the nation amongst all other schools in the country.
I am not going to lie, the grades of most build team people drop a little but we can usualyl pull them up. Most of us pack our 1st smester with tough classes and then try and get a sslack as posible 2nd semester. My 2nd sem. next year will probably be AP Chem, AP Gov, AP Econ., and AP Lit. My grades will suffer a bit, but I feel that I myself have the choice to make. I would rather have FIRST and maybe make 3 A’s and 1 B than have straight A’s and no FIRST in my senior year.
But the CircuitRunners have a strict policy that states that everyone must have all B’s or better to build or travel. Our mentors spnd a long time looking up teh grades of the 100+ of us that there are.
This is a good idea, no wait, a great idea. We have kinda the samething here, the mentors don’t get there until 4-5pm, and the high school ends aroud 2:30, I think. This time should be used for studying and not just waiting for the mentors or playing games.
I more or less paraphrased than quoted, but your right. You should never miss a class if your in college, and it doesn’t matter if its a community college or a university. Unless your sick, car problems, or something more important comes up. I know theres already a thread on this subject, but It also needs to be here. This thread is mostly about the high schoolers, but does apply the college students.
I started this post before you posted, but 100 students! You must have a lot of fun with that many people. Anyhoo, I’m off the subject and need to go get ready for something. Thats my final 2 cents.
[quote=Jherbie53]…
I more or less paraphrased than quoted, but your right. You should never miss a class if your in college, and it doesn’t matter if its a community college or a university. Unless your sick, car problems, or something more important comes up. I know theres already a thread on this subject, but It also needs to be here. This thread is mostly about the high schoolers, but does apply the college students…QUOTE]
It is not only students who have to make sure their “work” is done…we the adult mentors have responsibilities to our employers…we have to make sure our work is done as well…unlike students…we do not get second chances. When your parents say that school is a job…they are not wrong.
Pat Chen[/quote]
This is a good post to remind students of… part of me wishes it were well before build season! I think most get the point, grades HAVE to come first. Now that doesnt mean every student needs a 4.0 GPA, but every student should have an aim of a passing grade or higher.
I see Tom’s point that college isnt for everyone… but high school is the time to figure that out… and guess what? If grades dont come first, college WONT be an option. So unless you decide in middleschool that you arent going to EVER go to college, then grades should be your number one priority. Again, that doesnt mean sacrificing FIRST or the swimteam to get a 4.3 GPA (yes some kids at PHS have that… ugh!), but it does mean getting all your work done and trying as hard as you can with the time you have. Good time management (passing up bowling with your friends to do your geometry homework) will do WONDERS for your high school career. Plus, the aim of FIRST is to inspire students in science and technology… and tell me how many jobs in science and technology there are that dont require a college education?
We had a hard time on our team because this year we attracted some students who didnt always have great grades. We had to turn some away from competition. We had to ask a few to stop attending meetings until their grades came up… we even had to give away one’s plane ticket because his mother said his grades had dropped. Every instance of this was painful for all of us, but it has to be done. All of our kids have their sights set on college, so they have to keep their grades up. I would have to say most learned from it and brought their grades up, or are still trying.
There were many times this year that students or parents came up to me (guiltily) and said that they needed to miss a meeting, or couldnt come to build because they had too much homework or to study for a test. EVERY time my response was the same… I will NEVER be dissappointed if they are skipping their FIRST responsibilities for studies. The team can still survive, their resume for college wont.
And in closing, I know too many students who in college decided that they didnt need to care about freshman year, or a class they didnt like… they would squeak by with 2.0’s or something, and then think they could make it up later… they were WRONG. So many of them ended up with 2.7’s and the such, and while that is not bad, I can tell you right now that as a key recruiter for Harris, corporate WILL NOT let us hire any college grad’s with less than a 2.8. Some comapanies are 3.0’s. So learn how to get those good grades now… it WILL make a difference.
I spent most of today typing and retyping replies to thread, I wanted to get it perfect. I finally got it perfect, looked, and Kim has already said what I wanted to say. Thanks Kim!
I hope this thread helps students realize their priorities need to be on school work first and I hope it helps teams that have to deal with this problem.
I ask that you keep posting helpful things and stories here, so the thread stays visible for awhile at the very least, the more people who see it the better I think.
Thank you everyone. 
While I really, truly appreciate the comments made in this thread, I can only say that I recommend that you never let schools and grades get in the way of getting an education.
Very little of what I use on a daily basis in my career are things I learned in my formal education, but when I was young I developed a passion for learning that has stood me in good stead during 23 years in the high-tech industry. Learning to learn on my own and writing clearly are the two most important results of my early education. The content of what I learned in high school and college has largely been made obsolete since I graduated, but thinking and learning never go out of style.
As for grades, the less said the better. Grades are a bizarre artifact of the educational industry that ought to be eliminated – and the sooner the better. I have a whole rant that I do on the subject, but let’s just say that the older I get, the less sense they make to me. (And for the record, I had good grades in school. This isn’t sour grapes.)
Rick, I’d guess that you and I are of about the same educational vintage. I concur with all of what you said above.
Early in my engineering career I got involved in the college recruiting team for my first post-college employer, in the defense sector of TRW in southern California. Although Kim’s experiences in that kind of activity are more recent than mine, her posts (above here and elsewhere) show me that not much has changed. Grades are still used as a primary screen when evaluating entry-level candidates for engineering positions. So Kim and others are correct to caution all college students not to let their grades slip. [My own experience with college grades is remarkably similar to Kim’s, although my extracurricular activities were different.]
All that said about grades, Rick’s points are more important in the long run. The ability to learn on your own and to communicate ideas effectively are the most important skills – they are elements of that most prized of team members, the self-starter.
Sometime during your career, a fundamental technological change, a global political trend, or a strategic business decision will very likely create a shift in the demand for people with your skill-set (whatever it may be!), and when that happens you will fare much better if you are one of the self-starters.
I have to agree that being a good learner and a self-starter are definitely very important in the long run of life. And I also have to say that I cant entirely agree with the grading system schools use. I want to think that teachers are “getting it” more and more, by giving students credit for effort, partial credit on incorrect answers, and relying more and more on project work for grades. I had a class at RIT where there were NO exams. It was all on small projects and the final project. So I feel in that case grading is fair… but yes, the fill in the bubble exams really just tell you how good the student is at finding the answer. And dont even get me started on the NY Regents… lol.
But as exampled by many of us here, it is possible to learn to be a good learner, a self starter, a leader AND get decent grades. I dont think the students need to choose. I think they can do it all in this case. All are important, and its definitely NOT necessary to have a 4.0. In fact, my boss told me last year NOT to hire students with a 4.0 (obviously cavioted with the fact that there are exceptions). In general they are too work focused and too book smart to have the common sense that my department needs (we travel a lot to strange places, have to think fast and out of the box often).
So I want to propose that most of us are on the same side of the coin. We dont need to choose which is more important (learning or grades). When done correctly and in the right proportion, students can choose both.
Yes.
Cybersonics (103) requires every student on the team to maintain Honor Status throughout the year. In order to join the team, students are interviewed by team officers and mentors after a submission of there current GPA (at least 3.0), application, and letter of recommendation. All report cards are reviewed by team advisor’s, who are teachers at the school when handed out. Anyone that is unable to maintain their grades while participating in FIRST will forfeit their attendance at competitions and/or other team activities.
Corey