Question: Team practices to promote/support academics

[smurfgirl]

Some thoughts:

1) In the past, our team has required 60% attendance throughout the season to go to the regional competition we choose to attend, and 70% attendance to go to the Championship if we attend.

This allows enough leeway that you can take some days off for other commitments, and to make sure you can get your schoolwork done, but makes sure you're around for enough of the time that you're not feeling behind or left out.

With a lenient attendance policy like this, consider having certain days that most people are expected to attend, or mandatory meetings to "debrief" what's been going on and keep everyone on the same page.


2) Our team has decided to take the road where we do not want to get directly involved with the students' grades.

As a high school student, you should be responsible for managing your own time, your schoolwork, and your grades. This is between you and your parents, but since different students learn and work in different ways, we don't do anything like the mandatory study halls I've heard about.

Also, we don't ask about students' grades to make sure that they have a __% average. We've decided that it's not the business of the team leaders to know about the students' grades. The school has a grade policy where if you have an average grade below a certain percent, you are not allowed to participate in school activities. Beyond that, we leave it up to families to come up with whatever works for them.


3) I've observed that being a part of a team with such a demanding time schedule often lends itself to helping students develop time management skills.

While students with their whole evening free might put off their homework for longer and longer, knowing that you have robotics during a certain time block pushes a lot of people to get organized and finish all their homework before that.


4) Often, the people who spend the most time with the team end up being the most organized and have the best grades.

Obviously there will be exceptions from time to time, but it seems that the students who are able to dedicate themselves to a team have their homework under control already, which is how they can put the time into the team (related to my thought #3).


Another thought:

Our team has the policy "school comes first". It has been made clear to all students and their families that we want to make sure that school always does come first, and this seems to help whenever students have conflicts. It's really good to hear that you are thinking about and are concerned with students' academics, so consider implementing and publicizing a similar policy, where you make sure everyone knows that "school always comes first".