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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is all assuming that they CAN join a Mathcounts team.  My son is an 8th grader at Franklin HS and I was hoping they would put a team together.  The coordinator stated they were not doing it this year.  If you are not affiliated with a school team your child can't participate.  [/quote]

This is a good point. Same applies to Science Olympiad--students must be part of a school team.

I don't know how Math Counts organizes school teams, but in SO a team needs a faculty sponsor (team "coach") but parents often do much (in many cases, all)of the subject matter coaching in ES and MS. I would think that organizing a HS team would be simpler since in HS the expectation is that the students are doing prep on their own rather than with a parent volunteer coaching. Parents are still needed for a lot, though-materials, transport, etc.

Parents who want SO in schools at any level--volunteer, if you want it to happen. Even if a teacher is listed as the coordinator or team coach, SO is a program that absolutely needs parent volunteers (or grandparents or other relatives or just great adults). Can't happen without them in ES and MS and they're still needed in HS. It's a fantastic program! [/quote]

We are in a different state, but our school does not allow parents to help with SO at all. It is a kid run and kid driven program. What are the parents doing in your program?[/quote]

Didn't specify which state I'm in...Is this ES, MS or HS? Is no-parent a formal rule by the state SO board or a rule your school team coach uses? It's fine to have a rule like that, I think. Different states have different rules and states can organize SO differently, within national rules. Even the events used can differ - states can run some of their own events that don't exist at the national competition. So it's not surprising that there are differences.

In in our two schools, parents could volunteer to work with teams; please don't think the parents were doing actual expert subject "coaching" (didn't mean to give that impression above).  But at ES and MS level, for instance, a parent might agree to be the point person for a two-student team studying for a written test, and would ensure that the two kids doing that topic were regularly getting together to research, checking that they were sticking to the rules, etc. Otherwise the one teacher-coach or maybe a few teachers would have had to oversee dozens of pairs every week. And SO is unpaid and voluntary for teachers in our state. On building events (where kids actually make things like mousetrap cars or gliders etc.), adults were NOT allowed to build on or even touch the devices or materials and everything had to by handled and built by students, but we did want an adult present if for instance a fifth grader is using a drill for the first time (real example)....There was no way at our ES that kids could build or store certain devices AT school. And no way at our MS that enough school staff could be present (because adults do have to be accompanying students inside school after hours) for all the after school/evening meetings, held in the school building, of many different two-student event teams. If teams are solely meeting during the school day at school, that's fine too, but it's harder to get things done that way. This is all several years ago, BTW.

High school is very different and generally is just the teacher who is officially team coach, and the students. But parents still need to drive kids to competitions, help with team administrative tasks if needed, volunteer to help out at competitions etc.

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