After the crisis meeting, the coaches were still on strike, and the kids didn't mind one little bit. Accordingly, they had the next three meetings on their own: none of us coaches paid any attention to them at all. Once in a while, I'd stick my head in and ask if they wanted any help in setting direction or keeping on task. The reply was always a resounding NO.
I'd like to report that they made incredible progress in this span of time. Unfortunately they didn't.
However, they did develop enough humility that when I helped them set the agenda for the next meeting, they didn't object. When the meeting ended, they had allowed Chaz and me to remain in the meeting and ask them the questions that would keep them moving forward.
By this point I had them running time trials at the beginning and end of every meeting. I announced the pairings, and they didn't balk. I announced that the pair with the best record in practices would get 2 out of 3 guaranteed runs at the tournament. And they didn't argue with that either. They simply sat down and started figuring out how to improve their scores.
Of course, one week before the tournament, and all sorts of technical problems started emerging. Putting the programs into the program manager
Monique (our project coach) never did return to meetings, although she helped out behind the scenes as the kids reworked major parts of their research presentation. Two of the boys had vastly different opinions on the introductory sequence, and this was hashed out during several phone calls.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment