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How much is your school involved with your SO team?
At my school, they just let us use their library every Thursday for practice. After competitions, they put up a "Congratulations SO Team" message on the announcement board. We don't have buses for our tournaments or anything. I guess nobody outside of SO pays much attention to the SO team.

My school has a similar outlook; Access to library, school computers, and a siphon of cash (just enough to buy rule books and competition entry fees. Other students think that the program is just for the inverted and nerdy.

Miske wrote:My school has a similar outlook; Access to library, school computers, and a siphon of cash (just enough to buy rule books and competition entry fees. Other students think that the program is just for the inverted and nerdy.

Half of my SO team was in my French class last semester, and we would always waste a ton of time telling about the "nerd drama" that unfolded after tournaments. The other kids just looked at us like we were crazy.

We get the science and computer labs and coaches manuals and like basic materials. But we have 2 get our own stuff for building obv. We get an announcement after competitions..... Div. B is sort of a big thing (lucky us). no one really cares about highschool.

Our coaches are very dedicated to science Olympiad. Our whole school is just there because of teachers who are extremely dedicated and concerned for the students. We have a whole bunch of coaches, literally whoever is the most specialized in the school at the event. Since we have no government funding as we are a small private school, we have to buy all the material other than the rule books and official materials. We have to buy our own material for all building events which is a HUGE pain for us building event people, but there is nothing we can do..

AND I just realized who isis2014. We go to the same school and right now I feel like a genius.

Our school doesn't do a ton, and most would probably be happier if we didn't exsist (yay for poor public schooling). We've got one head coach that handles organizational stuff, and we typically have one or two other teachers that help out either in general or in specific event area, but they come and go from year to year.

Now what I was interested in hearing, the classes at schools besides the obvious AP science classes, we have things like astronomy and anatomy, but none of those go anywhere near the depth required for science Olympiad so there's not much people can do in school to help.

Our school probably doesn't really know we exist... We recently applied for a grant and got it, but our school does little to nothing to help us. Our coach doesn't do all that much, although she does help with logistics and getting connections with the higher-up people (whoever they are - for example, she got our Rocks and Minerals competitors to Cornell to look at samples with an expert). We have a student council, and they run most of the meetings and stuff like that. .-. I hope we can do well so we can get more help.

Just wondering; How large is your Science Olympiad teams?

Miske wrote:Just wondering; How large is your Science Olympiad teams?

We have one team of about 16 and one coach.

What you have to realize is that there are a ton of clubs and organizations that all feel like they should get more attention from their school as well. Well-established, successful, or popular clubs tend to get the most attention, and then the dozens of other clubs all get a similar minimal amount of attention. Some clubs don't get any. Having a message with "Congratulations SO team" or something along those lines is actually a good sign- we only got that when we won state. And with announcements, usually that comes down to the teachers and club facilitators- if you write up the announcement for them to read, they'll probably read it. The people in charge of the school have a lot more to worry about than determining how well one of their clubs did last weekend, especially a club that, in some cases, is less than 2% of the school.

While you might perceive the overall reaction of the student body to be negative, individually, I think you'll find that a lot of students probably would think that what you're doing is pretty cool. This might not be the case in middle school or even early high school, but as students mature they begin to understand the support and cohesiveness necessary to help each other out. Everyone has their own clubs or sports that they want people to support too, whether it's drama or swimming or band or whatever, and they probably feel the same way that you do. A good way to get more people interested in what the SO team is doing is by getting interested in (and even joining) other clubs. Between the 20-ish heavily involved members of our team, we pretty much covered all of our bases and the rest of the high school looked at us in a fairly positive light.

Also note extraneous factors: Our (public) school is known for its elite science program (which was won two $50,000 grants from local companies and has one professional exhibit at an interactive science museum in Kansas City and another one in the works) and also, well, we went to nats, and that helps. But in general the stuff listed above is true just about anywhere.