I'm the Co-Chair of the Science Fair.
Yeah, I'm a sucker.
I "shadowed" two years ago, then ran the fair with my Co-Chair last year, and am doing it again this year with both last year's Co-Chair and a shadow. Each year has had its own various bumps, and I'm sure there will be more yet to come for this year, but already it has been a banner year for the "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?" chronicles.
The biggest problem thus far has been people wanting to order display boards for their children.
I thought it was going to be a simple concept for people to understand: Give us money by the due date, your child gets a board!
But, people have had problems with both the concept of "give us money" and "by the due date." To make matters worse, although I removed the order box from the office the Tuesday past the Friday due date (to give a slight grace period) people decided they'd just start to stack their orders on the counter where the box used to be.
And so people are frustrated with me that with only a week away until the science fair, their precious baby doesn't have a display board.
Today I participated in a particularly interesting email exchange in which a person didn't introduce herself or give her child's name yet kept insisting her son needed a board. After a great deal of back and forth during which she refused to identify her son (for unknown reasons) I finally figured it out because she mentioned her son is a fifth grader. (The way this came out was that she sent a one-line email "I was told 5th graders MUST participate, so wouldn't you already sign him up for the fair and know that he would need a board!?!?!?!") So yes, while they aren't in the school directory, the son is on a fifth-grade classroom list. The only way I was able to figure it out is that the mystery woman's email address had a last name in it that I then successfully matched to a student in the fifth grade.
But no, I don't individually contact all fifth-grade parents (especially not those absent from the school directory, so I have no contact information) to hand-hold and ask them if they want to purchase a display board. Many 5th grade students reuse their boards from previous years or actually purchase a board by the deadline as the multiple paper and email communications about this subject indicate to do.
I understand sometimes parents forget deadlines. I've done it myself many times. But what I don't do when I forget a deadline is to blame the coordinator. Why should it be my fault? Ridiculous!
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One of last year's several annoying moments came when one lady made a big deal about how she felt it was important to have the fair mandatory for all grades, not just 5th. In fact, she told me I should be ashamed that one of my sons didn't participate. She argued with me for a long time, but it wasn't until later that I learned that her daughter (a 3rd grader at the time) had NOT participated! Some shrewd observers hypothesized that she was angry at her daughter for not participating, so wishes it had been a requirement so she could have forced her daughter to do it! Heh. Ironically enough, my argument was about self-motivation and introducing science in a fun, non-pressured way.
