Ways to make practice fun

[thegreengreatdragon]

I'm a newer coach (and an alum), and I'm struggling to make Science Olympiad fun for the kids.
When I was a student, I was very much of the "we just have to study hard" mentality, but now that I'm participating as an assistant coach, I see that this approach (which is still the status quo at my old high school, where I coach) isn't the best way to go about doing this. Because ultimately, this is about having fun and learning science, not winning. In fact, I think we'd probably win more if the students had more of a compelling connection to the club. My school has difficulty with retention and also with people putting in work, and I think part of the reason is because it isn't a fun club.
A standard practice looks something like this: the kids come in and are glued to their laptop screens for an hour and a half. I might administer a practice test or go around and ask if anyone has questions. The kids will work with their partners, perhaps, but it's very quiet for the most part. Does anyone have any suggestions for making practices more engaging? I want them to actually learn things and to walk away having had a blast.
(Keep in mind that these are high schoolers, so they act a little jaded and a little cynical. Middle schoolers are easier to entertain, in my experience.)

[knottingpurple]

I'm a newer coach (and an alum), and I'm struggling to make Science Olympiad fun for the kids.
When I was a student, I was very much of the "we just have to study hard" mentality, but now that I'm participating as an assistant coach, I see that this approach (which is still the status quo at my old high school, where I coach) isn't the best way to go about doing this. Because ultimately, this is about having fun and learning science, not winning. In fact, I think we'd probably win more if the students had more of a compelling connection to the club. My school has difficulty with retention and also with people putting in work, and I think part of the reason is because it isn't a fun club.
A standard practice looks something like this: the kids come in and are glued to their laptop screens for an hour and a half. I might administer a practice test or go around and ask if anyone has questions. The kids will work with their partners, perhaps, but it's very quiet for the most part. Does anyone have any suggestions for making practices more engaging? I want them to actually learn things and to walk away having had a blast.
(Keep in mind that these are high schoolers, so they act a little jaded and a little cynical. Middle schoolers are easier to entertain, in my experience.)

Okay, so these are my thoughts about why I enjoy scioly, as a high school competitor, but idk if this would apply to everyone, so hopefully somebody else will add their opinion:

• Food. This is slightly shallow, but our officers bought donuts for the whole team at the first Regional competition I went to, and I am very pro-donuts. Last year before States, a random team member also made us lemon bars and they were so good so this year, I tried baking meringues or shortbread or brownies for most of the regular weekly meetings in the fall - especially the introductory meetings where we were trying to recruit smol people, haha.
• Older team members. There was one senior in my first year in scioly who sat down next to me during a practice and made me promise to never quit scioly and I was like, of course I never would! But still, knowing that that alum was counting on me made me feel more like I mattered last year, which made me feel more like putting a lot of work in. There were also a lot of other people who I looked up to, so it was kind of like, because I admired them (...and/or always addressed them as "senpai", against their wishes), then I wanted to work hard to emulate them. Plus it's awesome when you go to an invite and you know that former members of your team are ESes or something and it's like wow if I keep putting in effort I can be an ES one day. I would love to be an ES.
• Non-scioly things the club does together. There's a party every spring after all our competitions are finished, and I kind of wish we would have one in the fall as well because you feel like so much better friends with everyone after you've just played mahjong with them for several hours. This also extends to like, the fact that half the club was more enthusiastic about playing frisbee at Nats than about anything else, and the mafia games we always play after events are finished at Regionals. Apparently I am not a very good God. But if there's somebody else being God in the mafia games, then yeah, they're so much fun.
• SciBowl and other competitions. We have one club which runs our school teams for a whole bunch of different competitions, so even when our SciOly team lost States for a couple of years, we had our SciBowl team to cheer when they went to Nats, which I think kept morale up - especially since SciBowl is earlier in the season, then having one win already is a good feeling. For those people who do both competitions, they're closer to each other, they're exposed to information in each competition which is useful in the other. And for those of us who don't, sometimes if you're really not feeling like working in SciOly practice, you can read questions for the SciBowl team! So at least you know you're doing something useful.
• Invites. First, it's extra motivation to practice, because you have a competition coming up sooner if you have an invite prior to your main competition, but second, it is several hours that most of your team is in one place thinking about scioly, an extra opportunity for people to be proud of each other for their medals, to play mafia afterwards, to (if you're very lucky) see something really cool in a test and be like, wow, I want to keep doing this event, I remember why I tried out for this event in the first place.
• Social "study" practices - which, idk, your entire complaint was that your practices are unsocial, but there must be some way to push it from one thing to the other? Obviously this can get out of hand, if all anyone does is socialize and eat food and not study, but I like that it's so acceptable in our club for people to drop their own practicing to make WIDI builds, or set out a row of powders for the Forensics kids to test, or Google Image search different lizards to test the Herp pair's ID skills. I've been doing a lot of the thermo build testing, although it's not an event I'm competing in, but taking water temperatures is something I can talk to people during, whereas reading textbooks, well, I can do that by flashlight after my parents think I'm asleep. This is even more extreme at weekends, which are at the library, and slightly lacking in even the nominal adult supervision our coach normally provides, so a lot of time is spent going and finding textbooks, going out for lunch, etc, as well as the actual practice-test-taking stuff the meetings are designed for.
• Frosbabies! If high school students are cynical, go for the least high school of the high school students. We allowed more people onto our team this year than could technically go to any single competition (we figured they could all get to go to at least one invite so it would be fine) and the group which most benefitted from this was the freshmen. They might not be very good now, but if you show them how wonderful the club is, and show them how to study, they have plenty of time to get better. Plus, as an upperclassmen, I care about doing well and setting a good example because they are so innocent and so enthusiastic and what if they look up to me the way I used to look up to other people? So having new, unjaded people, people who are still optimistic about improving, is really good for enlivening the whole team.
• Partners. If you think they're working hard, you'll work harder to not let them down. Last year I had a partner I kinda fought with in one event and a partner who was one of my best friends and is now my boyfriend in another event, and it was no surprise which event I did better in. A lot of our club eats lunch together, which, idk, maybe they were all friends prior to scioly rather than scioly making them friends with each other, but regardless, having so many people who get along with each other means people have partners they want to meet up with on the weekends, they feel comfortable reaching out to about what they do and don't understand, they trust to actually cover their part of the event.

Hopefully some of that is relevant to your question and maybe even helpful? I guess the TL;DR version of just advice would be provide food, have more competitions than just scioly, go to invitationals, do interactive bits of events during practices and study at home, play mafia and mahjong and frisbee and have parties. Also if you get some super hype people they will hopefully make the other people super hype. 'Tis a positive cycle.

[whythelongface]

(Keep in mind that these are high schoolers, so they act a little jaded and a little cynical. Middle schoolers are easier to entertain, in my experience.)

Odd, our high schoolers are arguably more wild than their middle school counterparts.

In response to knottingpurple's response (we go to the same school), I agree that with all of what she says, but I'd like to add a bit more: inspiration. Last year was the first year I ever made the team, and just as she described, she looked up to a lot of the older members of the club. As someone new, I always felt intimidated by some of the other kids. Most of them were returning Sciolyers; some of them were freshmen from the Grover team, some of them were just returning sophomores and upperclassmen. In the beginning of the year, a friend of mine told me that they (the captains) had accepted me into the team only barely - that is to say, I was the last person to make cutoffs. I'm not sure how true that was, seeing that I did my tryout events fairly competently, but at the time, I was completely spooked.

But the captains were just people that made sure everyone had a good time when it was time to have fun, and to work hard when we needed it. When we were at our lowest, the bus ride home from a competition we didn't do so well at, they would always give the best motivational speeches. They never made you feel bad or inadequate, and I guess they provided the inspiration for me to continue working my hardest while enjoying myself. Because ultimately, if you practice and work for Scioly and you don't derive any happiness out of it whatsoever, maybe it's not a perfect fit.

I'm so glad I did do Scioly, since it's such a big part of my life, and I'm so glad of all the things about it that make me happy every day.

[thegreengreatdragon]

Food. This is slightly shallow, but our officers bought donuts for the whole team at the first Regional competition I went to, and I am very pro-donuts. Last year before States, a random team member also made us lemon bars and they were so good so this year, I tried baking meringues or shortbread or brownies for most of the regular weekly meetings in the fall - especially the introductory meetings where we were trying to recruit smol people, haha.

Hahaha I actually have been doing this. Mostly because I recently realized I'm really into baking, but also have been attempting to lose weight. So baking for a large group is a good way to scratch that baking itch without gorging myself. Plus, they're teenagers so they eat anything and everything I make them. It's definitely made them more attached to me, which I guess is good, because they were sort of wary of this random college senior at first. Found a chocolate chip cookie bar recipe I'm making for Monday's practice.

Older team members. There was one senior in my first year in scioly who sat down next to me during a practice and made me promise to never quit scioly and I was like, of course I never would! But still, knowing that that alum was counting on me made me feel more like I mattered last year, which made me feel more like putting a lot of work in.

This is a really good point. Like I've said, they've started to become more attached to me as the year goes on, and I've seen a definite improvement in their attitudes. I can only do so much, though, when there are 2 dozen kids I need to attend to. You're right when you say that the older kids need to mentor the younger kids more. They're very aloof. Unfortunately, I can't really force them to be nicer to the younger kids, but I'll definitely try to encourage that more.

SciBowl and other competitions.

Ok, this honestly gives me so much grief. You have depicted a beautiful situation where the teams are very close to each other. Here, we sort of compete with them. For whatever reason, it never occurs to any of the students at our school to do both clubs. And our Science Bowl team is better (regularly goes to Nationals, which our SciOly team hasn't for about a decade or two...), a lot of the really smart people desert us and just do SciBowl instead. Maybe I should attempt a merger or something haha.

Non-scioly things the club does together. There's a party every spring after all our competitions are finished, and I kind of wish we would have one in the fall as well because you feel like so much better friends with everyone after you've just played mahjong with them for several hours.

Social "study" practices - which, idk, your entire complaint was that your practices are unsocial, but there must be some way to push it from one thing to the other?

We have a spring picnic every year, but attendance to that isn't great. I like your idea of a fall social event to make people more excited and to have them make friendships. There's a thread of the importance of social and friendly relationships that I understand the need for. It's very frustrating that the students haven't been making those connections. And those are things that I can't really force. But you give some intriguing examples of how we could encourage that--have people help out on events they're not doing, maybe hold more social events.

Frosbabies!

Haha the freshmen and sophomores are definitely much better than the seniors. I'm trying to foster a sense of community within them by giving them a lot of time and help, and they seem to be responding well. I don't think I could make a lot of change in the club this year, because change never happens so quickly, but I'm hoping that through them, we can reshape the way the club works right now.

I love all of the suggestions you've given me, but it's so hard to implement! Especially as a coach. I have a very different role now than I did when I was, like you, an upperclassman. For example, I have much less social capital than you. They like me and respect me, and I think I can connect with them on a different level than our head coach because I'm closer to their age, but I still can't socially interact with them the way you can with your fellow students, if you know what I mean. So, to that end, what do your coaches do to foster your guys's sense of community?

[thegreengreatdragon]

But the captains were just people that made sure everyone had a good time when it was time to have fun, and to work hard when we needed it. When we were at our lowest, the bus ride home from a competition we didn't do so well at, they would always give the best motivational speeches. They never made you feel bad or inadequate, and I guess they provided the inspiration for me to continue working my hardest while enjoying myself. Because ultimately, if you practice and work for Scioly and you don't derive any happiness out of it whatsoever, maybe it's not a perfect fit.

I'm so glad I did do Scioly, since it's such a big part of my life, and I'm so glad of all the things about it that make me happy every day.

As someone who did scioly through middle and high school and is now graduating college, I will tell you that your happiness and enjoyment is what will stay with you from this experience. My parents have my medals on display in our house. As a HS senior, I used to be able to tell you what event each medal was for, what place I received, and what year I received it--even the ones from middle school. It's only been four years, but I've already forgotten those details completely. The fact is, those medals become irrelevant. The reason I opted to come back and coach is because I had a blast being in the club, and I wanted to be a part of that again, albeit in a different role. If anything, this role is so much more rewarding. I had so much fun and learned so much as a student, and to be a part of that in these kids' lives is an incredible experience. I just feel like these kids don't have your philosophy to the club, and I want to try and foster it.

[knottingpurple]

SciBowl and other competitions.

Ok, this honestly gives me so much grief. You have depicted a beautiful situation where the teams are very close to each other. Here, we sort of compete with them. For whatever reason, it never occurs to any of the students at our school to do both clubs. And our Science Bowl team is better (regularly goes to Nationals, which our SciOly team hasn't for about a decade or two...), a lot of the really smart people desert us and just do SciBowl instead. Maybe I should attempt a merger or something haha.

I feel like it was originally something where the school didn't want to pay for multiple coaches so we ended up with just one person to be the official coach for SciOly, SciBowl, NOSB, now the Envirothon... But whatever the reason, we just have one club, run by one group of officers and one coach, out of one pool of money, and I think it works pretty well. Our middle school no longer has a SciBowl team, but since they do have a SciOly team, they'll show up to our club interest meeting thinking they'll do SciOly - but then they'll discover they're into SciBowl as well, or they won't make the main SciOly team but they'll still be able to participate in the B team for one of the other teams but it keeps them involved in the club. It might be hard to convince a SciBowl team to merge with your SciOly team though if that was, like, never a thing.