Mason Students Collaborate With Greater Cincinnati Peers to Coach Parents on Appropriate Game Day Support
We’ve all seen them. Heated adults in the crowd or on the sidelines, shouting loudly during their children’s performances. Sometimes it’s even more subtle. Parents may make negative comments or put unnecessary pressure on their kids before the game.
Mason students are joining peers from around the Greater Cincinnati region to tackle this issue as part of a real-world learning event known as Project Chaos. Approximately 100 students from Mason, Lakota, Loveland, Middletown and Butler Tech recently worked together to offer solutions on how best to help coach parents on supportive involvement in youth sports.
Students have collaborated at the Procter and Gamble GYM, Butler Tech’s School of the Arts and Mason High School's Learning Commons. Simran Tickoo, Jayda Malloy, Tara Maine, Tani Madichetti and Sophia Palermo helped host and organize the event held in Mason.
“It has been an amazing experience to host students from five different schools and to work collaboratively together in solving one community problem,” said Tickoo.
Students interviewed business partners to listen to their problem - and to see if they could tackle the community-wide issue. The Northern Warren County Alliance Soccer Club shared the issue and since the majority of the students had played a sport or are apart of an organization or club, the students were eager to look at the list of concerns the soccer club had and as a leadership group and come up with solutions.
“The NWC Alliance Soccer club provided a list of concerns and from there the leadership group selected the problem. The leaders took the problem and developed their How Might We statement,” explained MHS business teacher Deanna Hogenkamp.
With a few edits along the way, the final "wicked problem statement," became "how might we effectively educate parents about the goals of youth sports and encourage supportive parental involvement?"
“The leaders did a great job of developing a problem statement that was the right size for a variety of solutions to be generated,” Hogenkamp noted.
Students at the high school level have already experienced a variety of parental involvement through their own sports and clubs experiences. Students also read news articles about negative effects on youth development, and decided that they really wanted to create solutions that can provide a positive impact for the youth involved at the NWC Alliance soccer club - but also for other youth sports organizations to implement in their daily operations.
Groups of eight to 10 students worked together to brainstorm ideas, with each person having a role. All ideas were supported, with students asking the question “how might we” to encourage thoughts and ideas.
The students worked together to come up with ideas on how to effectively educate parents about the goals of youth sports and encourage supportive parental involvement. Ideas ranged from creating goals with parents, information sessions with players and coaches at the beginning of the season, to a parent child match to experience what it feels like to be on the field playing the sport.
“This entire process has been wonderful! I have really enjoyed seeing the amount of student growth from each meeting we have together. These students have all eagerly jumped into working collaboratively with students from different schools and have been working cohesively with one another. When students began pitching their prototypes at the last event I was blown away by the variety of ideas I heard. These students are doing a fantastic job of thinking of new and innovative ways for youth organizations to implement activities and procedures to generate a wonderful environment for students, parents and coaches. I am looking forward to hearing their finalized pitches!” said Hogenkamp.
Students ended their days pitching their sketched out prototypes to teachers to get quick feedback. They will go back to the drawing board to create their final prototype and presentation held at their next meeting in December. Final presentations to teachers and the NWC Alliance will be held on March 5, 2020.
