About this site

No

A lot of these things, particularly finding mentors, experts and even student team members comes down to networking. Ask everyone and anyone, post on social media, leverage all relationships you have, be willing to be flexible in terms of how the experts and mentors interact with the team. One season my team designed a board game for their Innovation Project. I supported a Kickstarter campaign with a new board game designer. I emailed him, explaining FLL and the kids' project and asked if he'd be willing to correspond with the team via email. He exchanged 3-4 emails with the team over the course of the season. He gave wonderful insights into how to design a board game and gave great feedback to the team on their game.

It's always about finding coaches, paying coaches in my school district. FLL coaches get a $750 stipend for 4 months of work. Sports coaches get about $3,000 for each 6-week season. That's roughly $10,000 over 4 months. District requires staff member, but it's more lucrative to coach 1 season than do FLL for 4 months.

Finding funding was our biggest challenge.

The group being united and quiet

Finding kids who were really into all the aspects of FLL was tough. Many just wanted to build random LEGO things and play. No homework, no research

No

My first year felt like "the blind leading the blind". I had no idea what I was doing and my team of 4 kids were able to complete only three missions on the robot field that first year. But they successfully completed them in competition, so we considered the experience a success!

The project is the hardest part of FLL

It’s very overwhelming for new coaches. Way too much to get done during the season when our school doesn’t allow us to start til mid September. And none of the kids have any experience

The hardest part for our team was to find some days that all of us could meet and work together because all of us had busy schedule. Also something that was challenging was to start effectively working on the robot game runs and the rest of the FLL categories, because we didn't know from where to start.

Lots was learned our first year.. especially for me, the coach.

Everything happening too quickly- felt like we were drowning

Support from our FIRST regional partners. I have had the privilege of competing in 2 different regions and it makes a huge difference when you have a region that communicates, hosts workshops and coaches meetings, and are there to support their team. My first few years of FIRST I didn’t have that and I felt very much alone. When I moved to a different region they were so supportive that I became a member of the regional planning team.

Our biggest challenge was a lack of time. We were only allowed 1 lunch period a week for FLL.

raising funds to support the team; coordinating meeting times

Preparing for higher levels, we went to state our first year and we’re woefully unprepared lol

I think that not many teams think about getting a table especially in the beginning but it’s a very important part of robotics.

Getting coaches, mentors,and parents to help

We have a lot of interested kids at my school and it is hard to find coaches and mentors. We have a few that do way too much.

Spent so much time on robot and missions, we forgot core values and completely failed there🤣😂🤣

As a rookie coach, lacking the knowledge base of just how to break the whole process down into manageable steps as well as practical coaching (and kids/parents management) advice made the year 20 times harder.

I have school teams, so some of the questions above are affected by this, eg finding a place etc.

I think our biggest obstacle was time. Also, FIRST's approach to the innovation project and robot competition is a bit confusing.

We had a hard time getting support from administrators in the school. Also - the season is too early. We would do better if competition was not until January.

Knowing what to expect at competition and when they would be. Classroom management (since our coaches were not teachers, we had no skills in managing the kids to keep them on task).

Probably training for new coaches (having more readily available about how FLL works and how coaches can do things on different teams would be really helpful, the learning curve as a new coach was steep), and dividing up things kids do on large teams in an ideal way especially when you start out as a large team that only has one robot

knowing how to choose missions that fit the teams skill level. Our first year we picked REALLY hard missions because we didn't know any better and it was frustrating for the kids.

I would love for there to be a network of mentors or other coaches that we could contact for help. I feel like there is no communication between teams in our area, and I would have loved to help another team get started or have gotten help from other teams when we started.

It was covid year august 2020

We are a homeschool team and we met in my home, borrowed kits from 4-H

We had two other established teams to work with our first year.

Funding- We are a community team. We don't have a host school or nonprofit that we can use their tax ID # for business donations. For example this disqualifies us from a Chipotle fundraiser, or many business donations, or many grants. Instead we mostly fund our team registration, supplies, robot kits, and LEGO's from our family budget. This prevented us from having a team for a few years. The first year start up costs add up quickly. FLL table storage and transportation- I own a car. So I cannot transport a traditional wooden FLL table. We meet in my home. I don't have a garage. Instead of a wooden table, we built one out of foam insulation panel, lots of duct tape, glue, and a few metal braces. It's lighter weight, I don't have to worry about putting holes in my walls, or scrapping furniture when we move it on and off my kitchen table. We also use a 4x8 sheet of 1/8 light weight, three ply, plywood/hardwood? I can't remember what it's called. We put the foam FLL table on top of my kitchen table, then place the thin 4x8 panel over it. We learned that the foam dented when kids pressed on it to attach Mission Models. We store the 4x8 thin panel behind our piano and the hinged in half foam FLL table in the hallway. The foam insulation panel shrunk from the summer heat (we live in AZ) between our first year and second year. So we had to modify it. It has not noticeably shrunk any more. Practice Area- I was unable to find a location to meet, where we could also store the wooden FLL table. And I don't have a way to transport the FLL table. So we meet in my home. We have had up to 5 team members.

Yes

I like hanging out with other people's kids. But I don't currently have a team to coach due to location (mostly...I'm not willing to drive more than 30 minutes one-way) and schedule (I work full-time and am not an educator. So I need a community team that meets in the evening and/or on Fridays or Saturdays. There aren't many of those in my immediate area.). So I volunteer at tournaments and help out coaches and teams who contact me from the Facebook group or other places.

This is our second year. We had no idea how to run the season last year. This year we. Is have two teams. There is a lot of interest in robotics.

Kids are always willing. I have to beg for new coaches to meet 2-coach requirement.

They took on fundraising and teaching LEGO Robotics classes to be more self sufficient vs relying on sponsors. That being said, we just started 4 new teams that are fully funded by sponsors. Our original team has been able to make an impact in our community so they are seeking out the sponsors on behalf of the new teams.

Camps

Requiring parents to act as co-coaches

By focusing on Core Values

They did not want to stop. They enjoyed the whole process immensely.

We have a few core members who have continued for 3 years. We have lost or dropped members who weren't very engaged and added new members after some screening.

It’s an after school club

I've been coaching for 8 years. This is the first year I have a returning team--usually I only have one or two kids return per year, so I've had a "newbie" team almost every year. The only good part is I've gotten more experienced at coaching!

my excitement for the activity

New group of students each year can apply. We’re a bit different since we are in a school.

This is only my second year, but they’ve been self-directed this year

We haven’t. Our team dies off 5 years ago and we revived it last year but only 1 kid from last year continued this year.

I am a team member and without the passion that all of us share for FLL we wouldn't be the team that we are right now. Each year some new members from our school join the team and the older ones that can't compete anymore leave so of course without that we wouldn't have kept the team continuing for 6+ seasons (we haven't retired yet :))either, but each season new member and old ones all share the same passion and dreams!

Honestly, lots of sacrifices from me, the coach. We are a school team and it is a very taxing job to sponsor an FLL team. 100% worth it and rewarding, but still a huge time commitment.

Last year was our first year

They keep coming back…

For me it’s about letting the students guide our team direction and finding ways to have fun along the way. Some days the kids come in ready to work hard and give it 100% and sometimes they just want to hang out. Either way their success and their struggles are all from their ownership. The wins don’t come from tournaments… it comes from my team members coming back year after year because of the family we built together.

The first team I coached folded after the founding teacher got moved to another school and I moved to another city for work.

stretching the team season past the competition, recruiting new members

We have school bass teams, and very generous district

By recruiting the same members year after year and folding in new members as others move on.

Busy

Getting others interested including students and coaches. Fund-raising a lot on my own time as well as dedicating time to learn spike prime app.

Science teachers and principals at schools who support the program with attendance and inclusion

Yes three years now

This is only my second year. We started our own team with friends after having had a disastrous unproductive year joining a random community-based team last year.

Grit.

We are only on year 2.

A combination of dedication to improvement and a constant willingness to iterate how its run and managed.

We are a K through 8 schools so every year we bringing new members as they age out. Every year we only have to replace at the max three members

The kids that are invested in the team are happy to come back and more kids generally sign up each year when it's advertised through Girl Scouts, each year is generally smoother when you already have most of the materials you'll need and know what you're doing more

Financial sponsorships and I bribe the kids with snacks.

We balance getting the work done with fun.

We are a Girl Scout team who is grant-funded each year. I always keep a few members, lose a few, and gain a few new ones. And we always have so much fun!

Sticking with same team

Through practice in summer too

Having teen mentors has been helpful since I don't know how to build and learning to program

Dedicated coaches.

We didn't, we missed Cargo Connect year, we couldn't find a second team member. I try and make a list at the end of the season of things to do different the next season.