Why Asking Kids for Officers and Team Members Rarely Works (Parenting and Teacher Tips)
The room smells like overheated solder and half-spilled lemonade pouches, and I’m leaning against a wobbly folding table holding up a sign I scribbled in neon marker: Looking for officers and team members! It’s the third week of our 4th grade community robotics club, and so far, half the kids are staring at their scuffed sneakers, and the other half are arguing over who gets to claim the last working blue battery pack.
This is my second year coaching the club, and last year I did this the usual way. I called for raised hands, the three loudest kids got all the roles, and they spent the whole season giving opening speeches at meetings while the rest of us did all the actual building. My son Milo is in the club this year, and I’d already seen him glance at that sign three times before ducking his head and going back to tightening a bolt on his robot’s claw arm. He’s 9, lives and breathes building, but he gets panic stomach aches if he has to talk in front of more than two people. I knew he’d never raise his hand publicly.
Javi, the kid who brings extra Hot Cheetos to every meeting and can talk for 10 minutes straight about Minecraft redstone, raised his hand first for president. Two of his friends followed for vice president and secretary. Then silence. I asked again, told the group we still needed three more roles, no experience required, you just have to show up to most meetings. Still nothing. I could see Lila, who gets sent to the office once a week for talking during class, twisting her hoodie string and staring at the sign, but she didn’t raise her hand. I remembered her mom saying she hates being put on the spot in front of people.
That’s when I changed it on the fly. I said, “Alright, no need to raise hands right now. If you want any of these roles, or even if you want to make a new role we haven’t thought of, just come write your name on the back of this sign after meeting when everyone else is leaving. No one has to tell anyone else if you don’t want to. I just need help getting stuff done, that’s all.”
After meeting, most kids bolted for the playground, and I was packing up tangled wires when four kids wandered over: Milo, Lila, Kai (who uses a wheelchair and had never joined an after school club before), and Zoe, who rarely speaks above a whisper. They all wrote their names down. Kai asked if he could make a new role called “accessibility lead,” and I said of course.
That’s when I realized how wrong we all get this when we’re looking for kid leaders and team members. Most of the time, we structure the process to favor one type of kid: the outgoing, unselfconscious, popular kid who doesn’t mind being the center of attention. That leaves 90% of other kids on the bench, even if they’re way more interested in the actual work of the group than the attention that comes with a title.
The small changes I made that day are things any teacher or parent leading a group can copy, and they don’t take any extra time. First, always offer a private way to sign up. Skip the public raised hands, skip the mandatory speeches, skip the public voting. A slip of paper to drop in a box, a sign-up sheet in the back of the room, a quick private chat after class works just fine. It takes two extra minutes, and I’ve seen it triple the number of kids who volunteer. Second, describe roles by what you actually do, not by a vague title. Instead of “build lead,” say “this person gets to sort all the building parts before every meeting and help people find what they need.” Instead of “outreach lead,” say “this person gets to take photos of our projects and tape them to the school bulletin board.” Kids don’t know what “vice president” actually means, but they know if they like sorting or taking photos. Third, let kids make their own roles. Kai designed our competition display table to be low enough for kids who use wheelchairs to reach, which got us a special mention from the competition judges. None of us would have thought of that if we forced him to pick from our pre-written list.
Milo is our build lead now. He shows up 10 minutes early every meeting, lays out all the sorted screws and batteries in a plastic bin he labeled himself, and keeps a little notebook where he writes down which group needs what part. When a kid gets stuck on their wiring, he walks over, points to the problem, and fixes it with them, no big speech needed. Last year, the build lead didn’t do any of that; he just gave a presentation at the end of the season. This year, the work actually gets done, and every kid gets a turn to build.
I’ve had a lot of parents tell me their kid “doesn’t have leadership skills” because they never run for class officer or join a team. That’s not true. Most kids just don’t want the kind of leadership we’re advertising. They don’t want to give speeches or be the face of the group. They just want to contribute something they’re good at.
We didn’t win the regional competition last month. Our robot got stuck on the ramp halfway through, and everyone laughed it off and got ice cream after. No one was upset, because every kid had done something they cared about for the team. Last week, the elementary school PTA reached out to me, because they’ve been struggling to get parents and kids to sign up for events for years. I sent them the three small changes I made, and they’re going to try it for their fall carnival planning next month. I don’t know if it’ll work for them. But I do know that if you’re looking for officers and team members, the best people aren’t always the ones who yell the loudest to get your attention. You just have to give them a way to step up without putting them in the spotlight. Our sign is still taped to the wobbly folding table, and the back is covered in names now, most of them kids no one expected to see there. That’s enough for me.
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