Not all robotics meetings are successful, especially with High School students. Some will devolve into pointless arguments about things that had nothing to do with the original goals. Some will have students that just sit and stare at you silently. There will be times that a student thinks that the meeting is a waste of their time, AND THEY’RE NOT AFRAID TO LET YOU KNOW.
Meetings with your students don’t have to be like that, here are some tips to help everyone get the most out of coming together!
(If you’ve got tips that you’ve learned, drop them in the comments below!)
1. Schedule around the leaders and mentors, not everyone
If you have more than 5 people that you’re trying to get in a meeting that’s in the afternoon/evening, there’s going to be conflicts! Trying to get the perfect time that everyone can attend will stress you out, take over a dozen different messages and probably delay when the meeting happens. The trick is to identify the key people that need to be at the meeting and schedule around just them.
If it’s a recurring meeting and you want to give more folks opportunities to attend, then schedule it on different days each week. For the programming meeting with my FRC team, we alternate Mondays and Wednesdays.
2. Clear expectations for the meeting (start/end times, objectives)
Try to schedule your meeting and send out a event to your team at least 5 days before hand. The event should have a clear start and end time, along with the main objective of the meeting. This way, your students can know whether or not they should attend.
3. Have a plan (at least an initial one!)
Completely winging a meeting can sometimes work but it’s much more likely to turn in chaos, or silence (which is much worse to me). If you have a vague idea of the steps you want to take in a meeting, then it will help you know when to move things along.
4. Empower the students
The best meetings I’ve been apart of are when I just have to schedule it and then I get to sit in the back while a student leads it. That student gets to be a leader, I can get to occasionally add my own input, and it’s easier for me to draw more students into the conversation. That leads me to the next tip:
5. Ask individual students questions, especially the quiet ones
There’s always going to be students that aren’t comfortable speaking in front of their peers. As a mentor, you’ve got to help get them involved, not only for their own growth but because they might have the best idea in the room!
6. Schedule the next meeting while everyone is still in the room
Nothing is worse than having to go through the scheduling process for the same meeting every single week. At the end of one meeting, make sure you always have the next one scheduled before everyone walks out the door.
Even better yet, just set the meeting to be recurring every week.
Thanks for reading!!