Have you ever felt that clubs at CA are a little too disorganized? I’ve often felt that there are too many clubs that are super disorganized or rarely meet. Clubs, especially the more serious ones, should use Schoology to increase commitment and communicate with their members without email blasting All School FYI. It would also allow clubs to keep their members updated so that meetings could be more about new items and less about reviewing what happened at the last meeting.
Before I talk more about Schoology, I should mention which club problems I am trying to solve. As I see the situation, juniors and seniors (and the occasional enterprising younger student) run clubs with varying dedication and success. From there, clubs fall into three vague categories. The first type is the “Well-Run Academic/Do-Good Club.” It meets regularly, and each meeting is organized and works towards the goals of the club. The second type is the “Hobby Club.” It has no academic pretensions; its only goal is to do or talk about a specific hobby together. It meets with varying frequency and planning, but the meetings are casual affairs. The third type of club is the problem I’m trying to solve: “Neglected Club." It is the saddest type. It rarely, if ever, meets. My main issue is that too many clubs, especially academic/do-good ones tend to fall into this category.
There are two clear caveats to my argument. The first is that not all clubs need to be hyper-organized. I think some educational clubs only work if they are well organized, but I don’t think the hobby clubs need a Schoology page. In fact, I quite like the disorganization when it comes to hobby clubs, it makes it feel more genuine instead of over-planned fun. Another cost of switching clubs and club communications to Schoology would be that it might be harder to find and join clubs if you missed them at Club Expo. A comprehensive, up-to-date corkboard showing all the currently operating clubs and whom to email to join would fix this problem.
A Schoology page would help Academic/Do-Good Clubs organize and encourage their leadership to do something. My idea would be that club heads check Schoology hopefully, seeing their Schoology page empty would eventually galvanize them into action. Schoology membership would allow certain clubs with serious goals to require more commitment. Everyone can stay and have a way to send messages and documents to only club members, not the whole school, and be sure that club members will see them. You have to want to be in the club to join their Schoology page.
The saddest part is the more people I talk to, the more I realize that there is so much passion in our community, and so much willingness to put in work to make our academic clubs amazing and our social justice clubs a force for good. And yet many of them never meet. Schoology might help. But the key will be the passion of the club heads.