Olympic Qualifying Help Needed

[jennicole]

My 10 year old has been given a project for her P.E. class this year that will count as one half of her grade for the 9 week term. The project's theme is ancient sports and my daughter drew fencing.

I admit that I am blissfully ignorant to the sport, but out of all the websites I have visited about fencing this one has been the most informative and easiest to understand. I want to thank the individual I believe the name is Craig Harkins for the wealth of information provided here.

On to the information needed that I am having a hard time piecing together.

She needs to know the steps a fencer must go through in order to qualify for the Olympic Games in order to create her timeline from training to the Olympics. I have seen where the U.S. Fencing team were in New York this past June and there was some type of Olympic qualifying with that for next year's games.

We know the obvious, years and years of training, practice and perfecting their skills. Naturally competitions and such, but at what level would these be at? Local, State, National etc. on up?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jenni and Renae Cole

[Craig]

There's a "preview release" of a new site geared towards newer fencers at: http://www.fencingclubs.us/ . I've put an article on the Olympic Path there. See if that helps you out.


Cheers,
Craig

[jennicole]

Thank you that has helped a good bit.

Jenni

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

That's a pretty big project for 10 year olds. Exactly, who is doing the actual work here? The parents? Because that's a crap load of info for a 10 year old to digest, outline, and create a report.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

it seems like more and more work is assigned to kids that kids can't possibly do.

then there's a lot of time that parents hate sitting by and watching their kids fumble with stuff...

and sometimes that the parents get curious and want to help.

like the time my dad went to radioshack and justified spending $30 on what was supposed to be a small, tiny, book report....

sometimes kids really don't have the skills to do the work...

[edew]

(Hope I'm not threadjacking this to the water cooler section...)

I completely agree about the expectations from schools on large projects for kids, especially young kids. In many cases, the grade isn't for the student so much as it is the grade for the parents of the student (or the parent's friend).

I took chemistry in college and one of the lab experiments we had to do was to identify the chemical contents of a 50cc specimen of some chemical cocktail.

You're restricted to the 50cc and you go through various tests to determine whether you have sodium this and that or potassium whachamacallit.

Well, next year I was talking to a student who was going through the same lab and told her that it's a tough lab experiment. (It was a three week project.) She said, no problem. She's going to bring it over to her dad's company, which did some chemical/bio-tech stuff and they'll do the assaying in a jiffy. She got the results done with a complete list of the chemical contents and used up less than 5cc of the sample. Got an A for that portion of the lab, anyway. I don't think that's what schools have in mind when they offer projects that don't directly appeal to the student's interest.

[Peach]

This is why (as teacher) I don't assign projects to be done at home. They do it all in school.

Drives the parents wild (I teach in a private prep school) because they feel as if they finally have a chance to get school done right and I'm letting their kid have all the fun instead.

[daeceg]

Hehehe...I'm working towards my teaching certification right now, Peaches. You know what my prof for Curriculum & INstruction says is the recommended amount of homework per night?

10 minutes per grade level, TOTAL.

That means a high school senior should only have 2 hrs of homework a night.

Now, when I was in the 8th grade, if I only had two hours of homework a night, that was an easy night! 4 or 5 was more likely.

How do you even get teachers to coordinate well enough to assign that little homework?

[nahouw]

Originally posted by jennicole
My 10 year old has been given a project for her P.E. class this year that will count as one half of her grade for the 9 week term. The project's theme is ancient sports and my daughter drew fencing.

She needs to know the steps a fencer must go through in order to qualify for the Olympic Games in order to create her timeline from training to the Olympics. I have seen where the U.S. Fencing team were in New York this past June and there was some type of Olympic qualifying with that for next year's games.

Jenni and Renae Cole

Hi Jenni and Renae,

Craig has given a concise synopsis of the qualification of fencers for the 2004 Olympics in Athens , as well as a nice summary of the US prospects. (BTW Craig, you have a great new site -- I love the "look and feel" and also the content!! keep up the great work!!!) For her report, this will give her the specific details of how the fencers will be selected for the Olympics.

If you want to view the official FIE rules for qualification, here is the link: http://www.fie.ch/Federation/Lettres...ersion-ANG.pdf
-- and she can include it as an attachment. Although I agree with Eric, that at10 years old, this is asking alot for her to do, she might as well learn from this exercise on how to give proper citations and documentation for her report -- it would serve her in good stead. If I was the teacher, and she gave this information with her report, I would give her an A automatically for doing her proper research!! (and at 10 years old!!)

Now, for the aspect of creating a timeline. Although I REALLY think that this teacher is going way out there to expect a 10 year old to be able to do this research, I can help you with a specific example that she can use. You are a smart parent to realize that it obviously takes years of training and dedication; if the teacher's attempt with this report effort is to help teach kids that great things don't come easy and hard work is involved, then that is good -- however, I still can't get my head around that the teacher asked 10 year olds to do this report, and that it will count for 1/2 of her grade.

Paolo Milanoli (World Champion 2001 and Olympic Team Gold Medalist 2000) started fencing when he was 10 years old. At 16, he was named to the Junior National Team -- in Italy, that means that fencing has just become your job -- all you do every day is fence, and you receive a salary. He first made the '96 Olympic team as the reserve at 27 -- though the Italian team won the Gold in '96, he didn't -- he was the reserve. He was 31 when he was on the Gold medal team in Sydney.

So, as far as to training and competing: Paolo competed in all local and National competitions from 10-14; he started competing in other European events and Junior World Cups at 14; he started competing in Senior World Cups at 20; he started achieving final results at Senior World Cups at 25.

His weekly training regimen consists of the normal things that all fencers do -- except for the fact that he is able to do it full-time. He takes lessons, does drills, bouts with other teammates, cardio workouts, and weightlifting.

Fencing is a very high skilled sport. However, when you are talking about going to the Olympics, you can draw some parallels to other sports. Take for example, another highly skilled sport -- gymnastics. Most of the girls in gymnastics in the Olympics started at 3 years old, and most have ever only been on 1 Olympic team. By the time you are too old to compete (your body composition has changed so much that it is too hard to perform routines), you are 20 -- a 17 year commitment -- the same 17 years that it took Paolo to make his first Olympic fencing team.

I hope this information helps your daughter with her report.

[westcoastsabre]

As someone whose just finished time at a private elementary school and is going on to a college prep school. I've found that the 10 minutes per grade level rule has, to a certain extent, fit in with my homework load. However, at my own and other schools the added time seems to lie in papers projects, etc. This is where IMHO your 4 to 5 hours has gone, to the term paper!

[frenzl]

The best way to get into the olypics is:
PRACTICE! PRACTICE! PRACTICE!
of course with goo teachers and fence with other good fencers.

[Craig]

(BTW Craig, you have a great new site -- I love the "look and feel" and also the content!! keep up the great work!!!)

The design has been all wflachka's. Gotta give credit where it's due.

Craig

[edew]

I'm also suspecting that the teacher doesn't have much of a clue, so didn't know the level of difficulty in assigning the homework problem. As a one-time teacher (college level, though), I had often created problems for exams or quizzes or homework that I thought was simple to do, but proved to be ridiculously difficult for those who didn't know the little tricks. I guess it did weed out the smarts from the really smarts.

[three_hundred_fifty_five]

In general, children are not smart; adults are smart. It's that simple. The exception are the gifted children. I wasn't gifted. I believed in Santa until the sixth grade. Pretty pathetic. Anyway...

I think it's kind of a waste of time to assign projects that don't require any effort by the child other than "bringing the project to school". What do they learn? The parent who does a better job gets the better grade for the child.

[jennicole]

I agree with the project being a bit much. Thankfully the teacher realized this after numerous parents complained. We now have until Christmas holidays to finish it and it will count on P.E., history/social studies and English/language grades as well.

To the one who asked about the school, this is a private school in metro Atlanta area.

A big thanks to everyone here that has helped. It's slowly coming together.


Jenni and Renae