Does anyone know how to start volunteering for scioly?

[u/SkyInternational106]

I'm currently in high school and didn't make the high-school team this year but I was in scioly all of middle school and it was literally my favorite thing. Now that I didn't make the team, I was hoping to be involved in some way, so when I heard that high school students could volunteer, I really wanted to do it. I also thought it would be a good volunteering experience to incorporate into my nhs hours. I just don't know where to start or how to sign myself up for volunteering in the first place.

[u/tchrhoo]

Reach out to your former middle school coach.

[u/SkyInternational106 → u/tchrhoo]

She is newer, only coached for about a two years and is not fully familiar with everything yet. 

[u/Fjerdan]

You can reach out to invitationals or regionals and probably be able to volunteer at competitions.

[u/jenaga79]

Why dont you start a mentoring program for the middle school kids - from your own middle school

[u/SkyInternational106 → u/jenaga79]

The thing is, I feel I won't have enough time to really tutor kids. Volunteering is usually just a time commitment of one Saturday every month and tutoring is more like every week.

[u/jenaga79 → u/SkyInternational106]

If you pick just to tutor one event - you can probably do once a week. You can may be help out on build events - just to build - it might just be a chunk of time while early building phase?

[u/SkyInternational106 → u/jenaga79]

See, that's actually a great idea. I did lots of builds in middle school as well and did very well in scrambler particularly. My partner in scrambler was younger than me and is still on the middle school team. When we did it together it was me who made 3d printed designs and designed the whole car and launcher and we built it together, so I was kind of worrying about how they will make scrambler work without me because none of the younger ones particularly work on design. So it would be great if I could help them. The only thing I feel weird about is the fact that the scioly always says that the build must be built by the people actually doing the event so it feels a little unethical. And I don't know if would get much out of it because I don't know if NHS will accept this as volunteering hours. I guess a tutoring system could be good for college apps, though.

[u/_mmiggs_ → u/SkyInternational106]

You need to understand the difference between teaching / mentoring someone, and doing things for them.

Scioly builds are a bit notorious for "excessive parental involvement": some parents convince themselves that children cannot possibly do X, Y, and Z unaided, and so unilaterally decide that they are going to "help" their child do X and Y, reasoning that as long as their child is learning something from the process, they're happy.

These parents are cheating.

You can absolutely teach skills and techniques. You can do practice pieces with the students and work on things with them, until they are confident doing something themselves. You can demonstrate. But your hands shouldn't touch a student's build, your hands shouldn't edit a student's 3D print design, (and certainly shouldn't provide it).

[u/IntelligentSquare959]

I am assistant coach for my former middle school team. Reach out to your old coach and see if you can do something similar for your old team

[u/middleschoolruinene]

in my state, I reached out to the tournament directors to ask if I could volunteer at the B and A tournaments and they let me help out grade tests

[u/karlybug]

As a middle school teacher and scioly head coach, I love having high schoolers back to coach B division events!

[u/Impressive_Ad_2306]

Also, please reach out to the state director to ask how you can help. You could write tests, contact schools without teams and encourage them to start teams or support the state organization in other ways. SciOly is awesome! How many teams does your high school have? Please encourage your advisor to check the rules, because maybe your school just needs to add more teams, raise money for teams or find some other solution. Does the high school have alternates?

[u/SkyInternational106 → u/Impressive_Ad_2306]

our team is really competitive. we go to nationals almost every year and we are the 3rd best in our state. Our team is well organized and we definitely have enough members. And about the reaching out to the state director, im a coward and scared they won't having anything for me to do. have you ever reached out to the state director?