I am working on setting up a competitive team at my high school and there are plenty of students interested, as well as some leads on funding, but no bites on teachers or parents to be the adult mentor. Is there somewhere I should be looking, maybe specifically for someone who can work to start a team?
Or, if anyone here is in the Menlo Park / Redwood City / Palo Alto area… (long shot I know)
Sorry if this is tagged/categorized wrong
You have interested students. Students should try to recruit their parents.
As far as teachers… In some order, I would talk to:
-Shop teachers (if any)
-engineering teachers
-physics teachers
-Admin (of all types)
-STEM teachers not mentioned above
-Teams in the area, to ask their teachers to talk to known colleagues
As far as anybody being in your area… grin Might have a few teams for you to talk to. Let’s just start with a couple that I know are still active.
Thank you! I am in contact with some other local teams who have offered to help. It seems we have everything except an adult…
We had a parent lead it last year, and it was alright, but they could not commit enough time to make a competition viable, so it was just working with a kit for a few months.
Has anyone had success with a team with no single lead, but a few different parents who can be present at student-led meetings (rotating)?
We get our mentors a few ways -
-Parents of children get interested, come for a few meetings, and get hooked and stay well after their child has graduated
-alumni come back after college to mentor. They don’t really come during college because of course, college, but they might show up a few times a season or volunteer at the events our team goes to
-at the community events we go to/run, we get people who are interested in what we do and they talk to our mentors who are on the side directing people (we as the kids run everything from setting up to showing off the robot. After the initial drive in with everything we need, the mentors take a step back and talk with parents on the side while their kid is with us). Anyway, people see what we do at these events and one thing leads to another and we have another mentor.
Be sure to twist your sponsors’ arms to provide mentors - the hard sell works once in awhile.
Also, students from local colleges can be mentors, too.
Always nice to get experts in all the various subject areas of building a team and robot but that isn’t an absolute requirement. You don’t have to have an expert electrician to help the students read the game manual’s electrical section and provide some sort of structure and order. Make that clear to potential mentors (the parents) since they might think they can’t participate because they don’t know how to make a robot.
Ask Lonny (NOT “Lonnie”): Mentor a FIRST Team | FIRST Robotics - California
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