Coaching a team - Parents Involvement

Parents involvement has a direct impact on the success of the team.

First, the parents that provide the facility for team meetings and running missions have to deal with the mess the kids leave around on a regular basis. That is definitely not a small task if we want to keep the facility clean and tidy.

Second, all parents have to trust the coach to coach their kids professionally, covering both technical and behavioral issues. They have to adjust their busy schedules to send their kids and pick up their kids on time. They also have to provide the time and resources for the kids to learn from their experiments with robots and research for the science project.

Occassionally some parents will talk to the coach about waht they think should be done. I often encourage the parents to talk to their kids directly and let the kids bring up the suggestions. Let the kids evaluate if the suggestions are worth brought up in the first place. This would prepare them to make decisions for themselves for the team, and for their lives in the future.

The communication between the coach and the parents can be a huge overhead if the parents do not respond in a timely manner. I have not found a solution to this problem at all.