School Supported Archery

Shannon writes about her project in her own words:

I spent over 30 hours investigating how to get an archery team established for my kids school, Community Christian School of Pease, MN, to both promote our school and build our students confidence. We currently have 8 students that have joined our archery team. The official season will start in January, 2015, until then I will continue to seek more participation.

There were two objectives of this project; one was to create more awareness within the community of the existence of our school. Although I cannot verify that this will be accomplished at this time, I believe that there is no doubt that this will be accomplished in the near future. If I would have had more time I could have made sure that we were better prepared by promoting the sport at our school on a larger scale. I may have also been able to procure the grant that was available so that we could have held the practice at our school and provided a better price point for participating students.

The other was to provide an additional sport team option for those who feel that traditional sports are not for them. This I know has been accomplished. One of the parents was discussing with me how excited she was because her daughter had this option because she was not interested in the more “girly” sports. The students have been really good at helping each other during practice. I believe that they genuinely care for each other, this falls in line with the family of relationship [ethics].

Even though I did not fully accomplish my goal, having a full archery team where we have our own equipment and practice in our school’s gym, I have learned a lot. Because I knew nothing of archery prior to this assignment, I had to do a little research on the subject. I also learned a few networking skills along the way as well. Even though I didn’t used to believe that it was all about who you know, for some things it really does come down to that. If I had not come across Gail and all of her wealth of information and knowledge, this project may have failed in a big way. Gail shared a lot of information that she learned the hard way:

• What works well
• What doesn’t work well
• Timing of communication is critical (informing the team of meetings and practice)
• Apps that are available for free that can help promote your school and team

I am very thankful to have had the pleasure of meeting Gail and feel she will be a lifeline to the sport.

For anyone else that would be thinking about doing a project like mine, I would suggest to be sure you allow yourself enough time, if possible, to implement it properly. I think this project was a pretty large one. When looking back, to do it justice I should have had at least another three months. This would have allowed me more time to get other parents and students involved to help promote archery for our school. All in all I do believe it turned out just fine.

I think you should continue to assign these [civic engagement] projects. They really open a person’s eyes about how they can make a difference no matter how big or small. I realized how the different families are part of my everyday life and how you participate and contribute to them without thinking about it.