The downfall of a great robotics team

[ARDEngineering]

Something I need to bring up,

So, it might just be my old team, the lack of focus, lack of teamwork, and lack of kindness, but this is the first time I’ve seen a dictatorship. First of all, we have only one person that is experienced enough to be a team captain, and from what I’ve seen, they don’t know how to lead very well.
All I hear when I’m in the workshop is orders; “…Go do this! I want this piece done!”
Unfortunately, the teacher for the engineering class is the team captain’s parent, so absolutely nothing but orders and wasted time is going around.

Second, the workshop is one huge mess, and we have class periods of students that tear the room up. From freshmen that draw on laptops, to sophomores that think it’s funny to cancel prints, or un-plug the printers, to pictures of Rick Astley shoved in our bags, it’s nothing but mayhem.

This is partly due to the teacher, their first year teaching in seven years since they were fired from their old position, and lack of discipline are really hurting more than helping. For relevance, the teacher was fired from our sister school after lightly cuffing a student over the head. Who thought it would be a good idea to hire this person again? And who allows favouritism and tyranny in a classroom?!

This is a mess, and I have absolutely no clue of what to do. My plan so far is when our sister school fires up her FRC team, I’m bailing. But I feel bad leaving this robotics workshop when we’ve produced some of the best robots in the past. We’ve gotten to semifinals in 2018, and got the tech inspiration award in 2019. We achieved these milestones with a kind and dedicated captain, Matthew Cardinale. In fact, he went on to work on the NASA lunar orbiter, which is crazy. In addition, one of the most patient FRC mentors, Phil Jenschke, a man that let us go on whatever path we wanted to.

But those days are over for now. We’ve been reduced to a meager twelve members, and the captain seems to only care about being in control, and copying other team’s ideas. Seriously, that’s all they’ve done.

Help?!

[Skyehawk]

Sometimes life lessons for some people come at the expense of opportunities for others. If there is one person that is the defacto lead they are likely under a lot of pressure at this point in the season. Hopefully everyone can learn from how things were managed

A search around the forum will probably turn up more than a few threads with advice.

Remember you are only seeing one version of events through your eyes. You seem to understand this well enough, deep breaths.

I don’t have much to say on the teacher situation, sorry.

Lastly, it is okay to step away, your health, family, school, all come before robots. I think that order is fairly well agreed upon on this forum.

[Jonny_Jee]

As a former student of Mr. J’s (back in the 2085 days), he really is a top notch mentor. He probably got all that patience from the headaches dealing with us students.

I’m sorry to hear your season isn’t panning out. You are your number 1 priority, and I hope you do what is best for you!

I wish you and the Cellar Rats all the best