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Unread 25-08-2010, 14:14
Andrew Schreiber Andrew Schreiber is offline
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Re: Limits on Team Hours

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dale View Post
While requiring a certain GPA in order to qualify for the team would be fine at most schools (we don't have letter grades as such) with only a six week build season a student can destroy their standing in a class before that reality is apparent to the team, parents or the administration. By the time the grades come out at the end of the semester it's too late to do anything about it.

In the past I've told teachers and parents to keep me in the loop if they notice a student is having problems. That works only sporadically, though.

The course workload at our school got so intense a few years ago that the administration instituted a school-wide effort to restrict the amount of homework a particular class can require per week, the amount of practice time a sports coach can require, etc. Until this coming year robotics has not been subject to these limits because the time you put in is voluntary once you exceed our 50hr per build season requirement. This new 200 hrs-in-the-lab circuit breaker is consistent with this idea of not letting one class or activity completely block out everything else in a student's life. Note this limit doesn't include time at home working on robotics, competitions, outreach events, etc.

I'm keeping an open mind about it.
On RUSH we had grade reports we had to have our teachers sign every week. I know you don't have grades in the traditional sense but would having teachers sign off that a student is performing adequately in their class be an acceptable method for determining if they are keeping up?

Also, while I disagree with the principle of telling students that they cannot spend more time doing X than a certain amount I have to say I like the concept of this policy. Perhaps the 200 hr hard cap could be relaxed a little but overall it doesn't seem like the sort of knee jerk reaction some school policies feel like. Additionally, it sounds like the school administration is really in touch with the needs of their students and would be willing to work with you should this policy be shown to have a negative affect on the program.
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