Revving up for spring semester means that annual student competitions are getting underway. Chaperones are eagerly volunteering for overnight trips (are they?!?) and teams are excitedly (or frantically) pushing toward their head-to-head showdowns. After years of helming Future Cities and now supporting my faculty coaches in their own lead-ups to competition, I know that these next few weeks are grueling nail-biters (and honestly, more memorable than the daily grind of classes in cold, dark, January). But why compete?
Competition, aka The Pencils, Pixels, and Panic of Student Showdowns
Why put in the endless hours before and after school and on weekends with your army of DECA-preneurs, debaters, and Cyberpatriots for the “thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat” (nod to the premillennial sports broadcast, Wide World of Sports)? Teaching our youth that they will experience both wins and losses – and how to take the next step following either outcome – is one of the most important lessons we can impart to them. And mentoring students to work effectively in team configurations is one of the most evergreen, and difficult, lessons we can share in steering the outcomes of competition toward wins.
A well-known parenting coach recently slammed competition as possibly “a bad thing” when viewed as a zero sum game. Sure, there are winners in competition, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is a loser. Competition is fundamental to the work of every American in our capitalist, democratic society; it helps us chase a goal, celebrate those who earn the highest honors (whether that is us, or others), and see with transparency the gold standard we should strive for. Who hasn't been inspired when seeing a buzzer-beater in a championship ball game, hearing a child correctly spell the winning word in a bee, cheering on our favorite American idol, or watching a successful SpaceX launch? Working towards big goals, along with others headed in the same direction, energizes our lives and gives us purpose. It also yields a roadmap for our daily work. Failure is just as important as success as it provides insight about "how not to do things" the next time. There is no inherent “good” or “bad” in competition, just lessons to be learned and carried forward.
Huddle Up! Winning (and Losing) Together
It’s important to note here that students rarely compete alone: more often than not, they usually compete in collaboration with teammates against opposing teams. Some may view this as tribal “us” versus “them” but – whether you’re talking about politics, sports, grant funding to universities, or Mock Trial events – such is the infrastructure of America. Team competition requires the collaboration of multiple individuals who bring unique skills to the group endeavor, striving collectively to attain new levels of achievement. So… yay teamwork, it makes the dream work! But we educators know that it’s not so easy: the implementation of team constructs in K12 classrooms is daunting. I routinely field calls from parents lamenting the woes of collective work – “my kid is the smartest and ends up doing all the work himself, what’s the point of this?” Or as a 2023 EdSurge article so artfully put it, “Why does group work suck so much? And why do teachers and professors continue to assign it?” A former student, Theo Cooper, who’s now an engineering major at MIT shared the answer with our FIRST robotics team on a recent alumni visit: “The easy problems have been solved, so working on anything meaningful means working on something inherently complex – and that will require many smart people putting their smart minds together constructively.”
To successfully cultivate K12 teamwork, there’s investment to be done: teachers require professional development to better guide collaboration so that we can effectively build high-performing student groups and teams. Just assigning roles to students is insufficient – they need guidance in emulating the agile paradigm of multiperson, time-sensitive workflows implemented in the tech world and beyond. One option is for educators to become certified Agile Classroom Teachers (through any of several online providers; the professional development efforts are well worth schools’ time and money). Such an evolution in how schools approach teamwork may not be easy, but if giant corporations including IBM can do it, and did do it under former CEO Ginny Rometty, then schools can, too – and doing so will not only give our kiddos the edge now, but in their professional futures, too.
From School to the World Stage
As we enter 2024, let’s stay focused on the ulterior end game of K12 contests: today’s preparation for school-based collaborating, competing, winning, and losing serves as a trial run for life's real-world experiences (no, it’s not just to hoist the trophy, although that’s pretty cool!). Our job is to coach our students to evaluate objectively, “What does it take to reach the top?” In guiding students to become both constructive collaborators and resilient competitors, we help them build powerful skills to thrive in the next phase of their academic and professional careers – and become leaders on the world stage.