Blank25 wrote: ↑February 27th, 2020, 5:26 pm
CookiePie1 wrote: ↑February 27th, 2020, 10:12 am
Blank25 wrote: ↑February 27th, 2020, 10:10 am
I really hate when coaches don't know tf how to do anything and when u and ur partner don't have partner chemistry/synergy bc the coaches are incompetent at choosing partners
you should push for student leadership. Right now, our group of 5 captains assign all the events and stuff.
We have 2 captains for all of our teams and then a couple other "officers" that do other work. But really just 2 captains. They all really have no real power except organizing study sessions and stuff and we aren't really allowed to choose our events. Events are basically chosen by how we do on tests in the beginning of the year, but they only do tests for like 4 events which really isn't enough to get a good view of students in my opinion. And then once we're done with the tests, we choose our top 3 preferable events, and the advisors(which are teachers) choose which events everyone gets and what teams they are on. Their decision is mostly rooted in past performances, those tests and what science classes we've taken in the past...Which is stupid
I agree that it seems a bit restricting on the students. Typically, we do tryout tests but we typically don't use those as heavily for assignments because we also only do 4-5 tests. Instead, we do an interest form where kids rate every event on a scale of 1-10, 10 being very interested and 1 being not interested at all. We also have team members choose their top 5 preferred events. Generally, we try to put kids on the events that they're most interested in. Most traditional science classes only give students a basic background in a scioly topic because as we know, scioly events tend to go very in-depth. We figured that students would be more motivated to work on the events they love and are interested in, and we also try to put kids together with their friends to encourage a good working environment. At the beginning of the year, we are also open to kids who want to trade events or switch around.
We will take science classes into account for certain events (Machines-AP Physics C, Chem Lab-AP Chem, etc) and we will put kids on events that we know they will do well in. But generally we're probably one of the more lax schools when it comes to events. At the bottom line, as students we know each other far better than teachers know us, and people *usually* get the events they like.
I will admit that some students get "screwed over" throughout the year, as we say. They don't get on the right team that they should be in, or don't get their optimal events. This leads to them coming off as a bad competitior based on their results but in reality they just weren't put in the right place. But we also take things like work ethic and how much effort we know they are willing to put in. Sometimes invy results aren't enough to speak for themselves so we do make exceptions sometimes.
I know that a lot of coaches are *reallllly* involved in every little detail of their team. I think the key for coaches is to learn to let go a little bit but still stay involved. This can be difficult but at the end of the day, the students win the competitions and not the coaches.