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FIRST General Forum
1

Hi,
Probably this post is aimed for mentors.
Until this year (2010-2013), we had about 16-18 members on the team. We (the mentors of the team) think the team achieved its goal so we are a little bit afraid of getting larger amount of members to the team. We have 12 students that are veteran, 6 students that are coming from FLL (very experienced after 2 years in the FLL) and 14 students who are willing to join the team from the 10th grade. 32 students is almost twice than we were used to.
We have decided that we can’t let everyone who want to join the team as last years.
How can we choose the students? We can’t find any way that is fair and giving the chance to students that don’t have the best grade but may be successful in the team.

-Yarden

2

Our team has been dealing with this for the more then 10 years. Our application does not use the students grades. This year included the students activities, courses, and hobbies. Why they want to be on the team. And the last was an essay on how to get around a angry moose without hurting it in Alaska with a pack of 20 seemly random objects. The purpose was to see what imagination, problem solving, and did they rember their friend and use them. The pack had the score Handel’s Messiah. We had many descriptions on how to use for building material something to distract the moose to singing from it to sooth the angry moose. The use of playing cards included throwing the cards and instructions to solitaire to so the moose would play and be distracted. Imagination counts as much as logic.

We had a third party copy the application with names, age, grade, and sex removed. They were listed by number at this time. Then the mentors read and graded them. Some students would list so many after school activities that we felt they would not have the time. We look for students that are willing to spend the time that it takes and not just have being on the team for college applications. At this time we discussed our views and came up with a group grade. Then we added grade and sex into the mix. We made our picks without the names of the students. This process is the worst part of being a mentor of a popular team and I hate it. Without it we would grow from 54 to 150+ in 2 years and that is above us. It took us years to scale the program up 54 and keep the quality and I miss having 35 students on the team. Our original mentor started this system and it works for us. Other teams have fine ways that work for them.

3

My team actually hit this wall for the first time this year, and I think we handled it pretty well. Let me detail this out for you.

General Interest Meeting: Students came into a theater or whatever, and we did our basic presentation about the team and why they would like to join. At the end of the presentation, we told the student to fill out an application and to show up at a “tryout” day.

Tryout Day: We gave the students some basic tasks and/or challenges. We were not looking for technical skills or even how well they completed the challenge. But rather, we were looking for people who worked well in groups, showed good logic in their thought process, and ultimately looked like they would be a good fit in our environment.

After the tryout day, student leaders and the head mentor met up to select the applicants. They chose the students based off what they saw at tryouts and applications.

Note about the application, we asked general, census information (name, age, contact information), but we also asked students to write about the time they worked on a team, why they wanted to be on our program, and some stressful situations they have had to deal with. The application didn’t put an emphasis on technical skill or prior robotics experience, but students who were involved with FLL and such could brag about that.

During the process, we were honest with the students about our expectations and our process. We emphasized that we were only taking 16-20 students, prior robotics involvement was not a prerequisite, and that we were looking for folks who would mesh well with our team.

In our mind, we didn’t set a very high bar for applicants, but asking them to jump over a bar let us see how high some folks could really go. As such, it was a good process, it was remarkably fair, the students and parents accepted it, and we will probably do something very similar in the future.

  • Sunny G.
4

We have an online application with a handful of short response questions and we conduct a 5 minute interview of each applicant. Additionally, we give all teachers in the school a list of our applicants and ask them to check yes or no for recommendation and write a short comment. It’s a difficult process, and it’s not without it’s faults.

There used to be a time where we could accept everyone who applied. Increasing demand has eliminated that possibility.

Right now, we have 18 returning students and 14 new, and we’ll be accepting 2 more 9th grade students. Having 32 is not a bad thing so long as you have the mentor and leadership support. Even with 32, we sometimes struggle to get 8 in the offseason.

We’re trying to get more students who are very serious about their involvement and will not be of the “sampler plate” variety and will really choose an area to get proficient in.

5

I cna’t say for how the FRC team picks and chooses. But on the BEST robotics we need a lot of people so we generally pick everyone up. But we still have a tryout day. But we recently ran into a problem a younger student whoose older brother made it onto the team wants to join. But from a past history we know that the younger student has a lot of emotional breakdowns if he cant gets what he wants and he dosent take directions very well. So we are trying to figure to tell him that he cant be on the team unless he changes these things. I don’t know are we wrong for trying to kick him off? Should we keep him on? I dont want to kick him off but with ony 6 weeks I cant have him blowing up. Any suggestions

6

This is one of those things that you need to handle delicately.

First off, I have to ask how you know about this particular student’s issues. Hearsay has a nasty way of bending the truth. If you want to take action against this student based on his/her past, make sure your information is concrete.

Secondly, I would recommend taking the student on board, if it’s merited, but do not single him out on any accord. Let this student come into his own and let him show your team what he can do.

Thirdly, if things don’t work out, or if the student in question gets unruly, dismiss him from the team. It’s easier said than done, but robotics teams can be chaotic at the best of times. If a student is purposely and persistently rocking the boat, have no reservations in dismissing him/her from the team.

  • Sunny G.
7

Safiq: I would sit the student down with his brother and explain to him that in such a short build time breakdowns hurt everyone on the team. I would then partner him up with a team leader on a smaller task such as the t-shirt design or booth design. If he continues his disruptive behavior then it is more than appropriate to ask him to leave.(We had to do this once to a student because he was starting to become dangerous.)

Yarden: I would start out the first introduction/presentation meeting praising the students on working to the point of having a full team. I would then implement a extremely strict attendance policy and tell the students that unless you follow it(excluding becoming sick/death in the family) then the mentors of the team have the right to remove you from the team. You can do the same thing with a behavioral policy and after a few months, even if you had more students than you thought you could deal with, you should have a solid team that is there not just for a resume bump but for being a great frc team member.

8

Yarden,
We are a class within the school district (7 schools but students come primarily from three schools and home schooled students) and all students must apply through their counselor. We accept 60 students each year. They know that many of them will not work on the robot but we have other work that needs to be done like building a field, animation, video and strategy and data collecting.

9

Embrace new members!! New people will bring new ideas that could vastly benefit your team. Of course, too many people can become a problem (for example, if your shop is tiny) but new people always bring something beneficial, no matter how small. Just like what Al said, most of the new members are aware of the fact that robots isn’t everything we do. There is something for everyone, and whether that is building the drivetrain, making videos, or running around in the mascot costume, there is someone out there who would be great at it.

10

I agree, but our shop is tiny and the number of mentors is not enough…

11

Yarden,

You have found the most important question to answer. You must determine what your mentors and your facilities are able to accomplish. Our system is dependent on the team captain to organize the returning team members. They help teach our courses and the run the team. Take your time and find what will work for you and then grow from there.

12

With an influx of students comes an increased pool of potential mentors: parents. Don’t ignore that resource.

13

Hi, I’m not a mentor, I’m just a team member but my team (2996) have had a similar problem in that we had too many new and inexperienced members and not enough for them to. We created an FTC team that served as a JV team to our Varsity. If students needed to learn new skills or couldn’t make the time commitment they were recommended to join the FTC team instead of the FRC. This way we still managed to keep our students busy, and maintain a steady new member flow to both teams. I don’t know if this is feasible for you guys, because you said that you had a tiny shop, but maybe you could organize different time schedules?

14

As a note, the OP is in Israel. FIRST at this time has no FTC teams or events listed in Israel. VRC also has nothing listed in that country.

For the OP:
I see a couple of methods. One, as already noted, is to increase the number of mentors (and/or the size of the build space, which may require a completely new build space).

Another method I can see working is to raise the lower age limit by one grade. Something like this (using the American grade system here): If your team is currently grades 9-12, make it grades 10-12. If you think you can have a few more after that cut, add in grade 9 on a “intern” basis–that is, they have more restrictions on when they can be there (parents with them?), or maybe they have to have FLL experience to join. That way, you only have to screen one grade instead of all of them.

And another method… Offseason Training. If you can get more students trained on the equipment, you can limit the number of students in the shop on any given night and still have a fully-functional crew there. This allows more rest/homework, and possibly whoever isn’t in the shop meets up elsewhere, finding more space for the team to use.

15

As the only full-time adult working with my team, and 50 students on our current year’s roster, I can say there’s no such thing as too little space or not enough adult help.
Be creative in how you use the veteran members of your team. One of the team mottos is “your second season as a CyberCard is your first season as a Mentor” - allow experienced students to take on leadership roles, design activities, generate ideas.
As Alan said, parents are a valuable resource - don’t overlook them.
An ongoing conversation I’ve had with several of my FriendsWithRobots revolves around the idea that some people need the team more than the team needs these people. These fine folks will fall through if membership consideration is based on interviews, applications, or grade requirements.

16

This thread concerns me greatly. I am amazed at what FIRST can do for students. I have seen lives changed and heard so many more stories. FIRST can be a place where all the skills needed for later life are learned and developed. Using some of the standards I have seen in this thread would have eliminated many I saw in my first year as a mentor that later became core members of the team. I have felt that every school should have a team and every student should have the opportunity to be on a team. I realize this may be impossible if you would really have 150 students but limiting by size should be a last resort. Splitting into subgroups, JVs and Varsity, FTC, anything to get them involved. I just hate to see a student who wants to join not be able to.

17

I would suggest having some of the veteran team members act in a quasi-mentor role some of the time. Of course, they will probably want to work on the robot from time to time (or have to), but on our team this pretty much clears up any problems that may stem from a lack of mentors.

As for the question of students, it really depends on when your team meets. If you meet as a class (during school hours) you will have to restrict the number of people on your team via requirements such as grades, previous technology classes, behavioral records (if that kind of thing concerns you, and other various background information that matters to you. You could also draw out of a hat, but that may seem unfair to some students. If you meet outside of school, there are always ways to accommodate more people. You could do this by breaking people up into ever smaller groups, but I find that this can restrict communications within the team. I would recommend splitting the team up into groups with each meeting on a different day. For example, group A would meet on Monday and Wednesday. Group B would meet Tuesday and Thursday. Everyone would get Friday off. In the end, though, you should stick with what YOU are comfortable with as not everyone’s system works for others. The important thing is that you are still furthering the goals of FIRST while still meeting the needs of yourself and others.