RoboParents: Parent Involvement on FRC teams

1. RoboParents: Parent Involvement on FRC teams Jenny Beatty 2012 FIRST Championship Conferences April 27, 2012

2. Should I be taking notes? Non-Engineering Mentor Organization (NEMO) www.firstnemo.org

3. Can parents also be mentors?

4. 2011 Brandeis FTC-FRC Cross Program Evaluation • Team Leaders who are parent/guardian: • FTC: 15.9% • FRC: 16.7% • Way to spend time with their own children. • FTC: 18% • FRC: 15% • FLL: 14.4% (from 2009 evaluation)

5. What do many teams look like?

6. Recognize some of the barriers

7. Roles for Parents • Technical Mentor • Non-Technical Mentor • Advocate or Champion for team • Member of Booster Club • Event volunteers

8. What team information is needed by parents?

9. Starting a booster club • Goal is to “boost” the existing program. • Need to determine: parent support base, district policies, constitution & bylaws, officers, meetings, opening bank account, keeping up with paperwork and finances.

10. Some Teams form booster clubs • Soliciting sponsors • Fundraising • Feeding the team during the build season • Travel/Events • Team shirts • Team building • Publicity • Car pooling • Celebrations • Promotion with school board

11. Handbooks addressing parent involvement Some great examples: • Team 358 -NY– 10 pgs of great information • Team 1511-NY – list of expectations & parent sign up letter • Team 612-VA-Code of Conduct and Student Contract – also signed by parent • Team 180-FL-organizational chart

12. Parent meetings • Attendance for parents should be a requirement for student to be on the team* • Great time to get paperwork signed-FIRST consent forms, parent contact form, medical form, driving permission form, school district-specific forms • Hand out schedule, sign-up for meals,

13. food • Most teams have a requirement that parents provide a meal during the build season. • Feeding the team during travel.

14. Useful resource • www.chiefdelphi.com

15. Support group & information exchange for all adult mentors in FIRST. • Offers facilitated meetings at events to share information • Private forum offered through www.chiefdelphi.com No cost to join. • NEMO Website: www.firstnemo.org • Resources page on NEMO website

16. Break Tasks Down Examples of Roles where Parents can help your FIRST team

17. Some of the 101 ways…. • Administrative • Mentoring • Travel • Social • Communications • Food • Sponsorship • Outreach • Spirit & Image • Construction

18. Lots of stories • “In most cases, it just took someone to ask for help to get them involved”. • “Lead Robot Inspector at CMP started out as a parent volunteer. He and his wife “stuck around” after his son graduated”. • “All in all, she has basically taken everything she normally does for me and my brother, and extends it to every kid on the team”. • “A weird extension of parents on the team: most students bring their parents to the competition. But one of our young teacher sponsors, fresh out of college, keeps bringing her parents to the competitions. Yes, an adult is so excited by FIRST that she brought her parents along”. • “I used to take our parental involvement for granted. At a team social at one of last year's regionals a parent from a local team remarked how they had to make a couple of trips to get all the kids to the regional. We had at least one parent for 25 of our 30 kids at the out-of-town regional, along with grandparents, aunts, and uncles”.

19. More stories “The importance of parent involvement in a successful sustainable team cannot be over emphasized”. “I know there can be a lot of competing demands for a parents time…And yet, I think parents should and often do see this not so much as a burden, but as a incredible once in a lifetime opportunity. No matter how challenging being a parent volunteer can be they should jump at the chance. Such an opportunity will probably never come again”.

20. Thursday, February 9, 2012It's 10pm, Do You Know Where Your Children Are? If it's a Saturday night four weeks into build season and you're a Robot Parent, you do.   My husband and I stopped by the shop last night to see what the kids were working on and to see if we could help with anything.  Many of the kids were at the basketball game since it was a "band night" so we were able to help a couple of the kids get parts ready for the rest of the team to work on after the game.After the game 10 or 15 kids came back the shop and started working.  A little bit later, another half dozen other kids who weren't on the team stopped by to see what their friends were doing.  Next thing, a few more parents show up and a college-aged sibling who has been helping out walked through the door. So at 10pm on a Saturday night six parents and mentors, 15 team members and some friends were hanging out machining parts, talking strategy, and chilling.  What a great way to spend the evening.Then, a parent who doesn't have kids on the team saw the cars in the parking lot and stopped in to say hi, another set of parents stopped by with a fresh pan of peanut butter-chocolate rice krispy treats, and another mentor showed up with his night vision goggles to check out the robot's camera and lights.  Did I mention it was 10pm on a Saturday night? And that's what build season is all about.

21. Questions?