#MediaMonday: The Post Convention Crash

All of you who have ever participated in convention knows that this is a strange time. You have spent countless hours practicing with the kids, arranging meals and transportation, testing submission links, charging batteries, and stressing over deadlines. After the emotional dump of awards, you finally realize that convention is over. 

So the topic of today's email is: Now, what do you do? 

This is a tough question to answer and we all come down from convention in a different way, but here are my suggestions. 

• REST:  give the kids time to decompress. They just gave your program a ton of energy and effort; let them recover. 

• REVIEW: let the kids show each other their entries. They want to share them. Since the contest is over, please allow me to suggest that there are no critiques during this time.

• REFLECT: have the kids identify areas in their contests that caused frustrations and what their plan is to overcome that next year (in CA!!!!).

• REGROUP: make a plan for next year based on this year's experiences. It's never too early to get your students excited about the next challenge. 

It was an honor to compete, collaborate and learn alongside all of you this past weekend and I look forward to seeing each of you in Long Beach next spring!

Talk to you soon,

Josh Cantrell