First Lego League coaching
April 30, 2017 8:35 PM Subscribe
Friend and I are exploring starting a First Lego League team! We know a few parents whose kids are in FLL but we are interested in learning more from the coaching perspective (we would be the two coaches).
Any experiences and thoughts are welcome, and we also have some specific questions and concerns, below. Our background: two moms of 7-year old boys, I am a software engineer and my friend is an architect.
1) You can obviously just teach your children all the same stuff without starting a FLL team (assume we can afford to buy various parts, kits and curricula). What's the advantage of starting a FLL team? Is it school admissions years down the road? Are the advantages worth the disadvantages, such as less individualized attention (teaching our two boys vs. our two boys plus eight more random kids)?
2) Supposedly you do not need an electrical or mechanical engineering background to become a coach. To what extent is this true? We would hate to be glorified babysitters where we blindly follow instructions without actual understanding of how anything works, how it fits into the larger foundation of key engineering concepts, and especially why we do this or that.
3) STEM has become so fashionable as of late and we fear that instead of kids like our two boys, who have an aptitude for this and are genuinely interested, we will get a bunch of do-not-want-to-be-there kids whose parents pushed them into it, or kids who have no aptitude and will slow everyone down and make us feel like we failed them as coaches, or worse, kids who have behavioral issues whom we have no skills to handle.
4) How much time on top of the lessons is this going to take, and how tiresome are these extras going to be? I am talking communications from the head organization, communications with parents about their children's progress, parents who cannot be bothered to read basic email instructions or rudely text our personal phones at night, parents who do not pick up on time, etc. (I co-organize a local political group and it consumes soooo much more of my time than I would have expected). We cannot afford for this to take over our day jobs and family obligations, and we certainly do not want for it to be a miserable experience where we hate it but have to soldier on because we committed. Any thoughts?
5) We would need to find a venue and hopefully a small-potatoes sponsor. Any ideas on where to look?
6) How much leeway is there for the coaches? For example, we would like to have the fees to be above cost so we could include one or two disadvantaged kids for free. Another example, we would like to have a "body break" in the middle where the kids get out of their heads and do yoga or hula hoops or whatever.
Any experiences and thoughts are welcome, and we also have some specific questions and concerns, below. Our background: two moms of 7-year old boys, I am a software engineer and my friend is an architect.
1) You can obviously just teach your children all the same stuff without starting a FLL team (assume we can afford to buy various parts, kits and curricula). What's the advantage of starting a FLL team? Is it school admissions years down the road? Are the advantages worth the disadvantages, such as less individualized attention (teaching our two boys vs. our two boys plus eight more random kids)?
2) Supposedly you do not need an electrical or mechanical engineering background to become a coach. To what extent is this true? We would hate to be glorified babysitters where we blindly follow instructions without actual understanding of how anything works, how it fits into the larger foundation of key engineering concepts, and especially why we do this or that.
3) STEM has become so fashionable as of late and we fear that instead of kids like our two boys, who have an aptitude for this and are genuinely interested, we will get a bunch of do-not-want-to-be-there kids whose parents pushed them into it, or kids who have no aptitude and will slow everyone down and make us feel like we failed them as coaches, or worse, kids who have behavioral issues whom we have no skills to handle.
4) How much time on top of the lessons is this going to take, and how tiresome are these extras going to be? I am talking communications from the head organization, communications with parents about their children's progress, parents who cannot be bothered to read basic email instructions or rudely text our personal phones at night, parents who do not pick up on time, etc. (I co-organize a local political group and it consumes soooo much more of my time than I would have expected). We cannot afford for this to take over our day jobs and family obligations, and we certainly do not want for it to be a miserable experience where we hate it but have to soldier on because we committed. Any thoughts?
5) We would need to find a venue and hopefully a small-potatoes sponsor. Any ideas on where to look?
6) How much leeway is there for the coaches? For example, we would like to have the fees to be above cost so we could include one or two disadvantaged kids for free. Another example, we would like to have a "body break" in the middle where the kids get out of their heads and do yoga or hula hoops or whatever.
Best answer: I did elementary-school level science-themed team coaching this year, and I have some comments on 3 and 4 which would be generally relevant to Lego League.
#3: You are extremely likely to have kids who a) aren't into it that day, b) are enthusiastic bombs of chaos, c) have specific learning disabilities or emotional challenges, d) are there to have fun with their friends and don't really care about the science/engineering. I don't think I had any kids who were signed up by their parents against their wishes, but there were kids who thought it would be something different. I loved the kids I was working with but I absolutely had to bring my A game, classroom management wise, and a lot of what I would improve next year was classroom management related. For this question alone, I think sticking with an informal thing with your boys and maybe a few pre-vetted friends would be better. You will have to handle these things, and if that makes you nope out, you should nope out now.
#4: Expect this stuff to take up more than half of your time. Maybe more than 75%. Expect it to be worse than the political group because the people attending can't make a lot of the paperwork choices themselves. Lego League is big enough that this may not be an issue, but our kids came up with a lot of creative solutions in practice that were not explicitly allowed or disallowed in the rules, and we had regular emails going with the organizers to find out if they would be dinged for them at the meet. That also took a fair amount of time.
5) In re: venue, talk to the school district or local PTA. All our stuff was done at a school and was one of the easier parts to deal with.
posted by tchemgrrl at 6:18 AM on May 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
#3: You are extremely likely to have kids who a) aren't into it that day, b) are enthusiastic bombs of chaos, c) have specific learning disabilities or emotional challenges, d) are there to have fun with their friends and don't really care about the science/engineering. I don't think I had any kids who were signed up by their parents against their wishes, but there were kids who thought it would be something different. I loved the kids I was working with but I absolutely had to bring my A game, classroom management wise, and a lot of what I would improve next year was classroom management related. For this question alone, I think sticking with an informal thing with your boys and maybe a few pre-vetted friends would be better. You will have to handle these things, and if that makes you nope out, you should nope out now.
#4: Expect this stuff to take up more than half of your time. Maybe more than 75%. Expect it to be worse than the political group because the people attending can't make a lot of the paperwork choices themselves. Lego League is big enough that this may not be an issue, but our kids came up with a lot of creative solutions in practice that were not explicitly allowed or disallowed in the rules, and we had regular emails going with the organizers to find out if they would be dinged for them at the meet. That also took a fair amount of time.
5) In re: venue, talk to the school district or local PTA. All our stuff was done at a school and was one of the easier parts to deal with.
posted by tchemgrrl at 6:18 AM on May 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
Best answer: So I've coached a couple years of FLL and been involved in other ways longer than that. Some general advice and a few point-by-point answers:
Starting with the generalities:
FLL is (at least in the Kansas City region, and I suspect most places) a very welcoming community, and there are usually a ton of resources for new teams. It looks like http://www.hightechkids.org/ your local FIRST organization, and they have good information on their site about starting a team. (Based on the location in your profile.) I would strongly recommend, if you haven't already, getting engaged in the local community and going to some FLL competitions or other events. Unfortunately, this is FLL dead season - the world championships were a month or so ago I believe, and things won't pick up until August. You might look into whether any of the FLL teams in the area hold summer camps, I know of at least one around here does. If you have a local Maker Faire, FLL-types tend to present there as well.
FLL is not solely about building a robot or programming - there is a lot of emphasis on teamwork, ethical competition (they call it "coopertition"), creativity, and research. In fact, in full FLL, the robotics part is only a third of your final score. Seven is really too young for full FLL, I believe the recommended minimum age for regular FLL is 9. I coached a team of 8-10-year-olds, and while we had fun, they were clearly on the young end, and we didn't do terribly well in competition. You're probably going to want to look into FLL Jr , which is kind of a pared-down FLL, mainly focused on the research, presentation skills, and building, and less the programming and competition. My kids were involved in FLLJr for a couple of years before we started a real FLL team - one of the main advantages is that it got them exposure to full FLL before they started actually doing it.
1. A LOT of FLL is not just about the building of a Lego robot - it's about teamwork, research, and presentation skills. Those things are hard to teach to an individual kid, they tend to work better in teams. However, especially at the younger ages, teamwork is hard. You can do Jr FLL with a smaller team; my recommendation would be to consider doing FLL Jr. the first year, with maybe a team of 5, and work your way up to a full FLL team of about 8-10. (More on that later.)
2. Really the main thing is having some programming ability, and problem-solving skills. I’m also a software engineer with some level of mechanical aptitude, and the technical part of FLL was no issue. The creative side was not my forte, but we muddled through. :-)
3. The good thing about FLL is that you don’t just get stuck with a team - you can pull in friends, co-workers’ kids, schoolmates, etc. There is also a “connections” board for coaches wanting a team and teams wanting a coach, but it’s fine to put your own team together and find kids you trust. Of course, there’s also the challenge that inviting friends to be on the team means keeping practice from becoming playtime.
With FLL, it’s good to make sure up front that the kids know that this is not JUST “play with legos” time, that they will be expected to contribute equally to the posters, research, and creativity, and that any homework assigned is expected to be completed just like school homework. With FLLJr, again, it’s aimed at younger kids, so there’s more flexibility.
4. A lot of this goes back to how supportive and responsible the parents you find for your team are. One good thing is that the cost of getting started in FLL tends to self-select more responsible parents (whether that’s fair or not is up for debate). It’s OK to interview parents for the team and set expectations appropriately with them. I never had a ton of problems as the parents I was working with for the most part were people I knew, but I can certainly see where others might have different experiences . As far as time outside of practice - it’s kind of up to you. For FLLJr, probably not a ton; for FLL, obviously there will be some weekend “rumbles” and competitions, but basically it’s a matter of you as a coach keeping ahead of where the kids are prior to pracices.
5. As far as venues go, the suggestion above about school is a good idea, especially at the elementary level, but also check your local libraries. For FLLJr we were able to meet at a library and just bring our stuff with us each week - once we moved up to full FLL we ended up meeting in my basement because we needed a place we could keep our stuff from week to week.
Sponsorships are everywhere for the asking. Find local technology businesses, or even non-technology businesses. Offer to put their logo on your t-shirts in exchange for sponsorships. However, you probably won’t need to worry about sponsorships for FLLJr.
6. There is no requirement anywhere for practices to consist of a certain thing or set of things. That’s all up to you. I would regularly send my team out to jump on our trampoline for 10 minutes when they got too wound up.
Cost: FLL is an expensive thing to get into, no doubt about it. I was lucky enough to get sponsorship from my employer the first year which covered some of the startup fees, but for a team of 7, parents were looking at $200-$300/kid for new team startup expenses. FLL Jr. is much lower, because you don't need the Mindstorms start-up kit and you don't need to buy the yearly set of obstacles, and the Lego WeDo components and software are much cheaper. For full FLL you’ll also need to build a regulation field, which requires at least minimal building skills (4x8 plywood and some 2x4s).
Something to think about with team size in regular FLL is that only so many kids can work with the robot at once; usually just a couple, so if you only have one robot, and you have a full team of 10-12 kids, you're going to have resource contention there, unless you can get lucky to find a set of kids where some are more interested in working on the posters, presentations, etc, and spread things out a bit.
There is also some level of pomp and circumstance around FLL events, most teams have custom t-shirts printed, and a lot of teams have some other signifier - often hats - that all the team members wear.
Wow, that turned into quite a brain dump. PLEASE feel free to me-mail me with any questions I might not have answered, and definitely spend some time on the FLL website(s) reading the coaching material. It’s got a lot of good information. And you should do it. FLL and JrFLL can be a lot of fun, and a great community.
posted by jferg at 6:59 AM on May 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
Starting with the generalities:
FLL is (at least in the Kansas City region, and I suspect most places) a very welcoming community, and there are usually a ton of resources for new teams. It looks like http://www.hightechkids.org/ your local FIRST organization, and they have good information on their site about starting a team. (Based on the location in your profile.) I would strongly recommend, if you haven't already, getting engaged in the local community and going to some FLL competitions or other events. Unfortunately, this is FLL dead season - the world championships were a month or so ago I believe, and things won't pick up until August. You might look into whether any of the FLL teams in the area hold summer camps, I know of at least one around here does. If you have a local Maker Faire, FLL-types tend to present there as well.
FLL is not solely about building a robot or programming - there is a lot of emphasis on teamwork, ethical competition (they call it "coopertition"), creativity, and research. In fact, in full FLL, the robotics part is only a third of your final score. Seven is really too young for full FLL, I believe the recommended minimum age for regular FLL is 9. I coached a team of 8-10-year-olds, and while we had fun, they were clearly on the young end, and we didn't do terribly well in competition. You're probably going to want to look into FLL Jr , which is kind of a pared-down FLL, mainly focused on the research, presentation skills, and building, and less the programming and competition. My kids were involved in FLLJr for a couple of years before we started a real FLL team - one of the main advantages is that it got them exposure to full FLL before they started actually doing it.
1. A LOT of FLL is not just about the building of a Lego robot - it's about teamwork, research, and presentation skills. Those things are hard to teach to an individual kid, they tend to work better in teams. However, especially at the younger ages, teamwork is hard. You can do Jr FLL with a smaller team; my recommendation would be to consider doing FLL Jr. the first year, with maybe a team of 5, and work your way up to a full FLL team of about 8-10. (More on that later.)
2. Really the main thing is having some programming ability, and problem-solving skills. I’m also a software engineer with some level of mechanical aptitude, and the technical part of FLL was no issue. The creative side was not my forte, but we muddled through. :-)
3. The good thing about FLL is that you don’t just get stuck with a team - you can pull in friends, co-workers’ kids, schoolmates, etc. There is also a “connections” board for coaches wanting a team and teams wanting a coach, but it’s fine to put your own team together and find kids you trust. Of course, there’s also the challenge that inviting friends to be on the team means keeping practice from becoming playtime.
With FLL, it’s good to make sure up front that the kids know that this is not JUST “play with legos” time, that they will be expected to contribute equally to the posters, research, and creativity, and that any homework assigned is expected to be completed just like school homework. With FLLJr, again, it’s aimed at younger kids, so there’s more flexibility.
4. A lot of this goes back to how supportive and responsible the parents you find for your team are. One good thing is that the cost of getting started in FLL tends to self-select more responsible parents (whether that’s fair or not is up for debate). It’s OK to interview parents for the team and set expectations appropriately with them. I never had a ton of problems as the parents I was working with for the most part were people I knew, but I can certainly see where others might have different experiences . As far as time outside of practice - it’s kind of up to you. For FLLJr, probably not a ton; for FLL, obviously there will be some weekend “rumbles” and competitions, but basically it’s a matter of you as a coach keeping ahead of where the kids are prior to pracices.
5. As far as venues go, the suggestion above about school is a good idea, especially at the elementary level, but also check your local libraries. For FLLJr we were able to meet at a library and just bring our stuff with us each week - once we moved up to full FLL we ended up meeting in my basement because we needed a place we could keep our stuff from week to week.
Sponsorships are everywhere for the asking. Find local technology businesses, or even non-technology businesses. Offer to put their logo on your t-shirts in exchange for sponsorships. However, you probably won’t need to worry about sponsorships for FLLJr.
6. There is no requirement anywhere for practices to consist of a certain thing or set of things. That’s all up to you. I would regularly send my team out to jump on our trampoline for 10 minutes when they got too wound up.
Cost: FLL is an expensive thing to get into, no doubt about it. I was lucky enough to get sponsorship from my employer the first year which covered some of the startup fees, but for a team of 7, parents were looking at $200-$300/kid for new team startup expenses. FLL Jr. is much lower, because you don't need the Mindstorms start-up kit and you don't need to buy the yearly set of obstacles, and the Lego WeDo components and software are much cheaper. For full FLL you’ll also need to build a regulation field, which requires at least minimal building skills (4x8 plywood and some 2x4s).
Something to think about with team size in regular FLL is that only so many kids can work with the robot at once; usually just a couple, so if you only have one robot, and you have a full team of 10-12 kids, you're going to have resource contention there, unless you can get lucky to find a set of kids where some are more interested in working on the posters, presentations, etc, and spread things out a bit.
There is also some level of pomp and circumstance around FLL events, most teams have custom t-shirts printed, and a lot of teams have some other signifier - often hats - that all the team members wear.
Wow, that turned into quite a brain dump. PLEASE feel free to me-mail me with any questions I might not have answered, and definitely spend some time on the FLL website(s) reading the coaching material. It’s got a lot of good information. And you should do it. FLL and JrFLL can be a lot of fun, and a great community.
posted by jferg at 6:59 AM on May 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
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posted by Nanukthedog at 5:40 AM on May 1, 2017 [1 favorite]