Right now, many of you are no doubt looking forward to a well-deserved break from your school responsibilities and the chance to spend some time with family and friends. Or the chance to spend quiet time all by yourself. Or to catch up on sleep, read a good book, actually see a new movie in a real theatre, tackle an outside project, or some other splendid way to spend time that you truly enjoy.
Whatever it is, I hope that despite sometimes frantic and stressful holiday activities you find a little time to do something that’s good for yourself. If you don’t, no one else can do it for you. And when you come back to campus after New Year’s, you won’t have another chance for a long, long time. Been there, done that.
You’ll be continuing to work with students to get ready for academic competition, but on an accelerated pace, since only a few months will remain before district meets.
And if you haven’t yet started serious work with your competitors, you’ll be doing double time if they want a reasonable chance of success.
But I do hope that you’re finding ways to do a significant portion of that preparation within your classrooms, and that practice is not just limited to after school or early morning gatherings of a very few selected students.
Every UIL academic contest is based on stateadopted curriculum.
Test questions from various study packets, or a discussion of contest essay questions or extemporaneous speaking topics can be great additions to classroom activities, and many students can be challenged to extend their knowledge.
You’d be amazed at the students who can be successful in events like ready writing, current issues or social studies, if they are just given the opportunity to show what they already know and the skills they have and can build upon. Someone in an English or social studies class, or the quiet kid in the back of the math class, might just be the person to push your academic team to a higher level because they have a natural talent or love for a subject area that gives them a head start on everyone else.
In reviewing last year’s district entries from the online system, it’s clear that not every member school had anything close to full entries, and that’s unfortunate.
Perhaps understandable in accounting or computer science if you don’t offer classes in those subjects (although some very successful competitors are self-taught or learned those skills from parents or others in the community), but not so with many other events.
With a little encouragement and some direction, kids can do amazing things. Maybe they won’t place their first try, but they can gain a great deal from the experience, and have that novice attempt behind them. Success in UIL academics does take practice and effort, but once they learn the ropes – and the rules – students in many contests can accomplish a great deal practicing on their own.
If you’re a coordinator without coaches for some academic events, start talking to your colleagues about the bright and motivated students in their classes.
If you’re from a small school, you already know who they are. In that case, check their calendars, as they are probably also participating in everything they possibly can at your high school. And if coordinators didn’t check with administrators, athletic and music directors and community organizations before setting calendar dates for UIL district and other academic competitions, expect to deal with conflicts.
There are simply not enough weekends in the spring to hold the myriad academic, athletic, music and community events without some students having to make tough choices, especially when you factor in outside sponsored competitions, proms, family vacations, scholarship interviews and college entrance exams.
UIL music contests may not be scheduled in conflict with academic district meets, but many music events were scheduled before district dates were selected, limiting the conflict-free dates within the two-week district window for academic meets.
Then a UIL calendar change necessitated by new TAKS test dates created even more schedule problems.
Because spring breaks occur at various times, even for schools within the same Spring Meet district, some coaches and students will be competing during their break. In all the years I taught, coached and directed the one-act play, I never did have an uninterrupted spring break. Hope you have a better track record.
But remember that the UIL Spring Meet Code also states that UIL coaches and administrators must “at all times, insure that competition is relative to a more important overall educational effort, using competition as a tool in the preparation of students for citizenship and successful adulthood.” Coming to fisticuffs with a colleague over a student’s participation is not the way to do that.
It’s inappropriate, unprofessional, not in the best interest of the student, and almost without fail – ineffective.
As you juggle calendar dates and struggle with limitations due to time, other professional responsibilities and your need to remain a healthy and sane person, remember that we’re all in this for the kids. That means setting high standards so they increase their chances for success, but also realizing that they have many interests and limits on their time and energy, as well. And it means working together as professional educators to serve their best interests, year after year.
I hope the year 2006 has been a good one, and that your spring semester goes well, both in and out of the classroom.
ODDS & ENDS Coordinators, have you heard from us? The academic department sent an email on Nov. 15 to all the coordinators’ email addresses we have in the data bank.
If you didn’t receive it, either you haven’t registered online to provide that information, you did register but somehow we got the email entered wrong, you’ve moved to other school or your entire school district email address system has changed and you forgot to let us know, or your district’s firewall considers mail from UIL spam.
Regardless, if you didn’t receive the message, which was intended to test the accuracy of our data, please register again or email me with your name, school, city and email address.
We will be compiling emails of coordinators only, as we simply don’t have the resources to keep the system updated with academic coaches, as well.
The message included the following updates:
• UIL coordinators may now enter their school and contact information in the Academic Spring Meet Online Entry System. (You will not be able to enter contestants until the meet has been set up by your district director. The deadline for them to do so is Feb. 1.) See: http://utdirect. utexas.edu/uil/
• New sample questions for the Current Issues & Events contest are posted. See: http://www.uil. utexas.edu/academics/current_events/sample_ questions.html.
• Instructions for clearing calculators for the Science contest are available as a PDF from the UIL academic Web page under the heading "Contests."