So as many of you know, competitions can easily take up an entire weekend. Especially two day comps in which Friday is set up day so literally your pit crew has 0 time at home to do work while the rest of your team loses their Saturday/Sunday. How do you guys deal with this? Do you have a deal or something with the school to give the kids more days to do the material? Do you rotate people so only some go on one day and some on next (I doubt this one but just an idea I thought of)? Asking because I really want kids on my team to fully enjoy the competition rather than worrying about the homework they have.
1836’s school had this policy (I’m paraphrasing):
- Students missing class to attend school-sponsored events will not be penalized for missed days (i.e. these days do not count as absences)
- Students know they are missing class in advance and it is their responsibility to find out the work beforehand and submit it on their first day back (or before, at a teacher’s discretion)
One of the challenges of participating in any extracurricular is obviously balancing schoolwork. That being said, I do not think that schools have an obligation to make special arrangements for extending due dates. You’ll know your regionals months in advance. The most important thing is that the students communicate with the teachers in advance. If compassionate teachers want to make exceptions, that is great, but they aren’t obligated to do so.
Same experiences as Jared, above. This is actually the school’s usual policy for field trips and competitions - when the sports teams or the band or the honor society go off to their competitions and conventions on school days, the same rules are in effect. Every once in a while a specific teacher will give a bit of extra time, but I suspect that’s the case for sports and the band as well.
I understand this issue.
This is the biggest reason we switched to competing during our spring break.
For us that is week 3 & 4.
Even our local (only) regional, which we would still have to ship/fly to, is during week 5… so not as bad as week 1 & 2 which are during our finals, but still starts the students off behind for the semester. Much easier to recover from but not ideal.
We have tried to split the team between events, but I found it really messes with the team cohesion and created more stress on the students.
We used to have the students take their finals before traveling but that didn’t really work out well for them in the end.
For the time being we will continue to keep to our spring break competition schedule. It is getting harder as regional areas go to district and more team growth than regional event creation.
Good luck this season,
Aloha!
For 4276, I check student grades a couple of weeks before an event that requires days out of school. If a student has an F in a class (yes this happens even on robotics teams), I do not give them a permission slip. The permission slip clears their absence just like any field trip or sporting event. They are free to attend on the weekend, but I cannot pull them from class when they’re already behind.
For those that attend the events, they know it is their responsibility to make up any missed in-class work, tests, etc. Some make the personal decision to NOT miss school for setup/inspection days, and only go on weekends.
I’m lucky that while I do not have any financial support from my school, the administration is always happy to accommodate our competition schedule.
Out of curiosity, how is this handled at your school? I see from your CD profile that you’re a teacher, but are you able to look at students grades yourself, or do they have to show them to you? We have run into issues with grades, as it is a violation of privacy for the coach to check anyone’s grades, and the activities department considers it discrimination to prevent students from attending based on number of failing courses 
. We want to emphasize that school should come first, but have no real way of enforcing that besides honor system. I don’t think there’s a way around it for our school.
Back when I was in school, both high school and college, my team(s) did something similar. The competition was a school-approved activity, but your teachers would require you to make up the work somehow. (My favorite was when a trip landed on a standardized testing week in high school–the robotics students would miss Day 3, so they got pulled in on Day 0 to make up Day 3 work.) Usually it was “after you get back”.
whenever we go to competitions for school, usually the rules that others have posted apply to us as well. However, on some occasions we have gotten back from competition very late into the night (near or past midnight). When something like this happens, our school allows us to miss the first initial periods of the day in order to sleep in a little bit and get proper rest. Rarely do we get days off after coming back from comp and usually if we as students talk to teachers, they usually extend due dates for us or allow us to make up tests.
Right now I’d say it falls under the “no one has complained… yet” category.
We have all of our grades online through our SIS, and I (while logged in using my teacher account) can enter an ID number and pull up any student’s schedule and currently posted grade. If I see an F, I talk to the student and parent, and ask what is going on, figure out if there is a path to correct it before competition, or at least appease their other teacher.
We operate as a “curricular” club on campus, so I leverage that to tell parents that if a student is doing poorly in their curricular work, they can’t go to competition.
Like all other activities at our school, if a student is placed on academic probation their extra curricular activities are curtailed. According to the school’s student handbook:
A student will be placed on academic probation if her grades fall into any of the following categories:
- Grade point average below 1.70 at end of semester.
- An “F” in one or more course(s) at end of quarter or end of semester, or two or more end of quarter or end of semester grades lower than a “C -”.
We stress with our students that their priorities should be health, school, robotics - in that order. If they need to miss a meeting, then they miss a meeting. If they need to spend an hour or two doing homework in the stands at competition, then that’s what they do. They are ultimately responsible for managing their time and meeting their commitments, and that means communicating their availability with the team.
Leading up to competition, we encourage them to talk about it with all of their teachers. Work ahead where they can, extend deadlines where they can. When we travel, we encourage them to use the time on the bus for homework.
Overall, it hasn’t been much of a problem for the team. 2017 was a little stressful for students, as we competed in week 4 then week 6 and then went to north champs (week 9)- it was a lot with fairly short windows between events, the only time we’ve had competition season that compressed. Since receiving that feedback from the students, we’ve tried to spread out the schedule more - last year was weeks 2 and 5, followed by north champs (week 9).
One of the big things that helped me out the most was talking to my teachers way in advance. If you give them like a 2-3week lead time then they are a lot more likely to either let you do the assignments before the comp, give you some extra time, or even in a few cases just drop a small assignment all together.
Of course all of this depends on how much teachers respect the team. I really lucked out with my teachers all 4 years in that I got ones that respected what the team did and thus really helped me out on the work situation during comps.
I don’t actually remember off the top of my head what the absence policy is, but I know that my school is in the majority of schools with the, “students are responsible for their school work while away.”
I have usually done my work on the drive to competitions, so this wasn’t a big issue. I suppose you could do the work beforehand, but I usually don’t do that though.
For many years, the 3946 coaches had to get the students to present their report cards. Because the burden of proof is so easy, students needed to prove they were passing at interim reports and quarters to remain fully active on the team. Last year and this year, the school was able to set up a virtual “eighth class” in the grading web app which is taught by the head coach. This allows the head coach to see team members’ grades at any time.
On our team, the responsibility of getting school work done falls completely in the students hands. Last year as our driver, I was often leaving Thursday directly after school, going to and event and getting back Saturday night (except for out of state events when we would get back Sunday like you are describing).
Knowing when these competitions were ahead of time, I would start talking to my teachers on Monday or Tuesday of that week and get all of the school work I would be missing. I would always aim to have all the work done before the competition knowing how tired I would be the day after, and if the work load was too much for me to complete in the time before, then I would negotiate with each individual teacher for 1-2 day extensions on the work so I could complete it. This process is never very difficult, and my teachers have always been very accommodating, but of course I realize that this may work for everyone.
For us, having a school based policy is impractical due to our team being a part of multiple districts. But in my eyes a student should be responsible enough to manage their work load. They know when the events are, they know their classes and their teachers, and they know the consequences of not adequately preparing before an event.
May not work for everyone*
As a community team we have students from well over a dozen different schools so unfortunately we are not able to arrange special concessions. When selecting our district competitions we do try to take this into account, and prefer the ones that would result in less school lost. Unfortunately District Championship and Detroit Championship are non-negotiable in this regard. We have to leave it between the students and their parents to figure out what to tell the teachers when they have to be away for events. They treat it the same as if the student will be away due to family stuff.
We stress from day 1 that School Comes First and ensure that the culture on the team does not penalize or ostracize a student for simply being busy with school or choosing to stay home from a meeting to study for exams or work on an assignment.
We enforce a curfew at events and encourage students who aren’t actively involved in scouting discussions or late-night software work (they have a curfew too, just a bit later) to get rested and/or do homework. Renting a coach bus allows us to offload the driving duties to the pros, and we can do things like drive back late into the night the same day an event ends, which reduces the amount of time lost to the event.
This disconnect from the schools unfortunately does raise some “interesting” discussions. For example, one of the girls on our team said she was penalized by a teacher who “did not believe” that she was on a robotics team (you know, 'cause she’s a girl. :rolleyes: )
So, as an alum and now college student I have zero empathy for students who do not get their school work done. As several people on this thread have said, you know competition dates well in advance. I would often start getting ahead on my school work the week before a competition so that week would be an easy week. It is part of the teaching in the program, if an adult goes on vacation and takes days off work to do so, they must make sure any work they have to do during those days gets done before they leave or in a timely manner when they return. It is no different from the student’s school work. If we have a student who is seriously in jeopardy of finishing their work we just won’t take them to competition at all.
AS a student and not a mentor on the team, I can say that most of us get our school work done before competitions start. We often times ask teachers for the upcoming homework a few days in advance, and we hand all the homework in the Monday after competition. Often times, teachers are willing to push project dates back or allow students to make-up tests/quizzes a few days after competition. Many students, although given the opportunity to get homework in advance, don’t do the homework in advance and finish it on the bus rides to competition (for travel events) or when they come home (for local events).
For world championships, we get all homework for the week of the competition days in advance, which we complete during downtime at competitions (not directly at the venue) and during travel.
At the end of the day, it seems that everyone agrees that it is ultimately each individual’s responsibility (whether student, mentor, or other) to handle his/her personal obligations, whether or not those obligations allow any extensions or exceptions. It is better to learn this lesson when the impact is a few points or a letter grade than when a job or family is on the line.