Teams with Big Student Counts but Little Mentor Counts - How do you do it?

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Hey folks!

So I’ve seen a number of threads recently where some (quite successful) teams talk about having 50+ students, but < 10 mentors. This is utterly mind-boggling to me - and something I desire to learn from.

So my question to folks who’ve worked with teams with ratios similar to that 5:1 or more… how do you do it?

Some questions that are on my mind… What kinds of leadership structures are in place? Who’s really in charge, and how do you organize yourselves into a hierarchy? How does a unified mission, vision, and values get passed from person to person? How do you address conflict and student discipline, if needed? How do you ensure the structure persists year to year?

Context for why I ask: I’ve also hit more than one situation recently where, despite having a better mentor/mentee than 5:1, stuff wasn’t working well, and the main solution proposed was simply “More mentors”. While I’m sure that could help, I’m also trying to think more outside the box - what are the proven best practices other teams have that I could incorporate into these situations?

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I speak to our team setup a bit. so we have 3 dedicated teacher mentors and a few (2-3) on/off mentors that usually show up once or twice a week. We have about 30 students currently with 3 different departments. So lets talk about what works well:

  • Student leadership is key, we have a director team that students apply to be on every year and they are in charge of the team. they run their departments and make sure things are done. they submit orders to teachers for purchase and handle a lot of planning related aspects to the team and even some training.
  • not the easiest thing to get to but experience. this year I had several groups or students that could just handle whatever I threw at them (I run our fabrication on and design on the team). Knowing who I could be hands off with and who I need to hover over makes a big difference. Also, grouping and distributing those people so that the new students can learn from the experienced ones when I was with another group.
  • Organization of supplies and groups. we group the kids into premade groups for making subsystems before the build season so we can ensure that there is a distribution of experience. This makes my job easier to focus on bigger picture aspects and I can check in with group leaders for specific aspects.
  • As a mentor, knowing where I’m needed and where I can step away from. I had students this year that could run our CNC machines with little to no supervision and our traverse group was having a lot of trouble so I was able to focus more on that as needed.

Lemme know if you have any questions! 10:1 works really well for us and I know as teachers we’re all pretty happy with it right now.

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It’s important that students are enabled to step up and check the people-manager/training boxes so the mentors can focus on whatever your particular situation needs mentors to own (purchasing, sorting travel, locking the shop, running the big machines, liaising with parents/school/stakeholders). Students can also take a lead on many of those things, especially when you have @jaredhk around, but some situations may not permit student support or ownership there.

Leadership structures often sort themselves out with a careful eye on talent and who looks to who for guidance (hard skill guidance and soft skill guidance). There is no magical team structure that is one-size-fits-all teams/seasons/organizations.

I learned lots of lessons and made plenty of mistakes as a leader in FIRST and now the workplace. I’ve learned that when you are mindful about making space and have a growth-building culture, people will step up to fill the gaps. Be mindful about owning what you, as a mentor, NEED to own and make space for your students to pick up the gaps.

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Pro-tip: let your students do real leadership work and they’ll take on real leadership roles outside of the team – and maybe even plan some events after they graduate :wink:

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We (the 79:3 ratio) have five departments (mechanical, controls, strategy, business, and marketing). Each of these departments has a head who organizes the department and delegates to people within their department.

At the beginning of the year after we get our incoming members, each department has student-run curriculum to get the new members up to speed. This might also come with a few guest lessons from a mentor.

Mechanical (design+manufacturing) has two more sub-heads, for design/cad and manufacturing who also help organize the whole department. They also have subsystem heads for the parts of the robot (shooter, intake, climber, hopper/serializer), who each have their own team. They also (I think, I’m not in mech) have integration meetings between subsystem heads to make sure that the robot will fit together and no one is conflicting with each other.

Controls (programming+wiring) also has subsystem heads who coordinate with the mech subsystem heads for communication+understanding what we have to do with the code. This worked so well this year that we had all the code for the subsystems done before mech was done manufacturing the robot so we could test and fix right away. We also have project leads for our solo controls projects, such as autos, narwhal dashboard (our secondary driver monitor), ball tracking, and more random projects that come up. All these leads have their own groups, but groups are more fluid in controls - you generally just go in each day, figure out what needs to be done and what you can do, get some people who want to do each thing, and then do it.

I can’t really speak for the other departments, because I don’t really know their structures, but I’d guess it’s mainly run by the department head who delegates things to other veteran members.

Mechanical and controls also have scrums (we’re following agile project management) where all the subsystem/project leads meet (along with the presidents; we have two presidents whose whole job is to coordinate departments) and discuss progress as well as blockers to keep us on schedule.

There is also a weekly scrum demo/cross functional where all subsystem leads+controls project leads+other departments report their weekly progress and goals for the week, as well as an all-team meeting where the presidents give updates and news.

There’s also individual subsystem scrums, where the subsystem lead gets their group and delegates things to do for the day and gets progress updates.

Basically, lots of leadership and subleadership, and lots and lots of meetings.

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The short answer is that you let the students lead. It’s amazing how much they can step up when they know there is literally nobody else who will do it for them/design their parts/order things/or even necessarily check in on them as often as they should. Failure is a real and ever-present possibility, but the students (at least on our team) tend to thrive despite (or prehaps because of) this.

The long answer:

We fall into your parameters, (unless you are incredibly broad in your definition of “mentor”). We average 50-60 students with about 3 “full time” mentors, ~2 “part time” mentors, and a small parent-run booster club, plus a few interested professionals/alumni who drop in randomly for a few meetings per year and help put out fires or answer questions but who aren’t providing long-term/stable mentoring/advice. Professionally our mentors are a project manager (who dabbles in programing and 3D printing), a physics teacher (me), a retired electrical engineer, a retired toolmaker, and a (new) mechanical engineer who graduated from our team a few years ago. Our parents in the booster club work in a variety of mostly non-technical fields and mostly try to help out with managing the team checkbook/refunding mentors for purchases, booking rooms, running/helping students run fundraisers etc. and, in this capacity, also do some level of mentoring with our buisness department, but the relationship building and individaul time/person isn’t at the same level.

Our student leadership structure is divided among 4 Captains who have Division Heads and Department Leaders underneath them. MANY students have a leadership role (in many cases “job title” might be a better discription, but the big idea is to just provide structure). Dividing the responsibility out helps make sure everything gets done, but having a hierarchy alo helps make sure if there’s a weak spot that it gets identified as quickly as we can. We try to make sure the students don’t have too many positions, but all of the Captains and Division Heads are also the leader of one of the smaller departments in their area so they still have something to “do” at all times and also something to show for their work at the end of the year. The mentors all know which departments/divisions/captains we are responsible for checking and and, ultimately, all of us report to our head coach.

Off the top of my head, our student leadership structure looks like this, or something close to it: (The roles are adjusted slightly from year to year based on where weak spots were the previous, things that feel like they should be combined/added/abandoned based on new projects/inititaveis, , etc. )

Format:

Captain (4 total)
…Division Head(s) reporting to that Captain
…,…Department Leads reporting to that Division Head

Admin Captain (basically the bridge between a student and a coach - takes attendance, helps with logistics like reserving hotels or restauraunts for team meals if needed, makes sure people have turned in their paperwork, puts out fires, etc.)
…,…Spirit Lead
…,…Food/Snacks Lead
…,…Safety “Captain”(official FIRST role, we treat this as a department lead
…,…GEARs Lead (our girls in engineering support group)
…Quartermaster (in charge of organization and ordering - this is a blend of both the admin department and the engineering department, we’ve found it tends to work best if they report to admin though)

Engineering Captain
…CAD & Drawings Division
…,…Training
…,…File Organization
…Mechanical Division
…,…Drivetrain & Bumpers
…,…Manipulator #1
…,…Manipulator #2
…,…Manipulator #3+ (as needed)
…Controls Division
…,…Electrical
…,…Pneumatics
…,…Programming
…,…,…Development sub-department
…,…,…Training sub-department
…Strategy Divison
…,…Scouting
…,…Field Elements

Business Captain
…Finance Division
…,…Fundraising
…,…,…Volunteer Coordinator
…,…,…Restauraunt Fundraisers
…,…,…“Big” Fundraiser #1, 2, 3, etc. (as needed)
…,…Grants
…,…Sponsors
…,…,…Sponsor Retention
…,…,…New Sponsor Recruitment
…Marketing
…,…Visual Art
…,…Social Media
…,…Photography/Historian
…,…Webmaster
…,…Writer/Editor
…,…Apparel & Merchandise

Outreach Captain
…Camps
…Volunteers & Community Ed
…FIRST Programs
…,…FLL Jr
…,…FLL Curriculum
…,…FLL Mentor Coordinator
…One-Off Events
…“Crimson Classroom” (one of our continuing outreach initiatives we need someone to manage)

At the end of the day we’re a slightly above average team and we work hard to be that. I’m proud of what we do, but we also won’t be dethroning 254 anytime soon. We tend to be in elims at weaker regionals and have a 50-50 shot of making elims at stronger regionals. We average about 0.5 banners per year (more chairman’s than event wins, but we’ve done both) and have made Einstien once. As one of the few mentors it can be stressful at times; I used to be the head coach and had to take some time off a few years ago because it was just too much, but now I’m back helping out again.

Trust your kids. Be honest with them, let them know how much the team needs them and that your mentors really do have limitations. Try to let the students do as much of the leading as they can and have your mentors put out fires when they need it.

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My team has had 50+ and about 4 mentors for as long as I can remember. Our team is almost completely student-led (which I love). However, make sure you aren’t putting too much pressure on these student leaders and ensure your mentors have a close relationship with them. Student leader burnout has definitely been an issue for my team in the past. Team members may trust your student leaders less than the mentors so I think it’s beneficial for your mentors to openly back the decisions your students make (obviously not if it’s a terrible decision but hopefully that doesn’t happen haha). I also think some things should be solely handled by your mentors too, like behavioral issues or disagreements. But don’t worry because students who are passionate about FRC will be up for the challenge :slight_smile:

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Oh!!! You’re from Robot Casserole! I don’t know if you know or are in contact with Jeremy and Brittany Lee, but they mentored your team for a while and then helped mentor my team for a year in 2017. They might have some interesting insights on what works/doesn’t work with the team structure I described in my other post. (It’s worth noting that they year they were with us, we had a lot of challenges and bit off more that we could chew - we also had our highest mentor:student ratio that year, so it might be very interesting to see what they have to say about the good, the bad, and the ugly. At the very least, we learned a lot from them.)

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It’s all about student autonomy. If you can build a team culture and structure that allows students to step up and take on meaningful upper-level roles, that frees up the mentors to focus on teaching rather than coordinating.

This takes years to do; it needs to be stable and self-propagating (onboarding itself is one of the meaningful organizational tasks that eventually students can handle).

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I have no idea…

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Unique Situation here… Small Rural Town with Graduating Class sizes of 30 here, and only 125 students 9-12.

Currently our team is around 25-29 students large, and I am the solo mentor. How do I do it? a burning Passion for Robotics. That and caffeine… plus the occasional spark of “AHA” out of kids keeps me going. Fortunately I teach during the day, and I have interaction with most of the students during that time. But a typical day… is comparative to herding a bunch of Kittens and Puppies that just consumed a bunch of Monster Energy Drinks, and yet have to still run the obstacle course. It is tough don’t get me wrong.

To answer your questions…

Leadership has been little lately due to the Pandemic, and so I’ve been working on rebuilding the structure. Currently I have three Juniors with actual Regional Experience… A Group of Freshmen and Home Schoolers that have no experience, and a shrinking budget. So I’m relying on the few with experience to keep the program up and going. However I myself spend a lot of time cheerleading and organizing the events, and hope kids show up. Not the best situation really… but I’m fighting the same battle as many others through kids out with Sports, Work, Family endeavors, and many other facets. I’m happy to get whomever I can whenever they can.

Conflict and Student discipline hasn’t really been needed much (Fortunately for me) But that doesn’t mean It doesn’t happen. We had a year with high tension between personalities… ultimately what worked best was having them work on separate projects or assignments with the program, but yet still be able to meet on occasion. Alas… I have found that communication usually is the best remedy. Being open and talking with the students directly, but also parents.

Lastly, I think the most fortunate part for me is building the Rapport with the kids. My team is made up of kids from all walks of life, and the best thing I have done was sit and talk with them individually as we work. Get to know them personally, and work with them one on one at times (when possible). It is a Juggle and a struggle. But worth it in the long term. I have some alumnus that keep coming back to chat with me, and still talk about how being a part of the team was the best thing of their entire High School Career. But that stems directly through me(you) as the mentor working with them and building that rapport.

Hopefully some of this is good for insight. Again I know I’m a very special case… but it work

TL;DR I’m the solo mentor driving this big beast. I use whatever I can as best to my abilities, and I rely heavily on the students to lead the charge.Try to be open on Communication and build Rapport!

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Keep it short and be blunt they outwork us in the off-season. Mentor and train in the off-season and build together during the season. Even if it’s just personal development the more I’ve trained myself in the off-season the better I’ve gotten at mentoring and training others too

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Until this year, we generally ran worse than 10:1. As so many others said, giving students responsibility and trusting them is key. The students need to be there because they want to be, not because they’re padding their resumes. We have an application process for joining and we start the year with over 100. The students run the training as much as possible in the fall and organize the students during the trips–it’s generally not adults gathering and herding students. Adults are there to guide, not to command.

Here’s our team handbook if that’s helpful: https://www.citruscircuits.org/uploads/6/9/3/4/6934550/2021-22_team_handbook__2_.pdf

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