Team Captain

Team Captains are two volunteer mentors on a team for a program site, school, or club that lead the mentor team each week. The role for team captains differs depending on if the team captain's team is located at a school site or is a virtual club. Team captains are essential to the logistics and functioning of clubs and camps each week.

Who is a Team Captain?

Team Captains are the volunteer team leads for each specific school’s partner company or each after-school club (virtual or on-site). There should be two team captains for each team to ensure that absences can be handled and that the responsibilities are split.

Team Captains should expect to dedicate extra time before the program begins to attend a team captain training session, meet with the teacher liaison and program coordinator (DISD only), and train their volunteers (DISD only). During the semester, team captains should expect to dedicate a small amount of extra time to prepare for each session, addressing team concerns with the program coordinator, and occasional team meetings.

Responsibilities of a Team Captain are:

Lead the session each week, introducing and concluding the session, managing breakout rooms, and leading the brain break
Communication of issues with students or technology to the Program Coordinator
Mainline of communication to the mentoring team of program changes
Providing the program coordinator feedback about the program and students
Attending check-in meetings periodically throughout and once after the end of each semester
(DISD only) Ensuring all mentors complete DISD volunteer application and background check
(DISD only) Training mentors to use the Bold Idea systems and on session structures

How to Lead a Bold Idea Learning Session

Bold Idea Learning sessions are 1.5 to 2 hours in length and broken up by one break at the halfway point of the session. Team captains are in charge of managing each session and leading breaks. Sessions might look a little different depending on if they are in person or online or the first session or the last session, but the basic structure of Bold Idea sessions is the same.

Example of Session Schedule

We recommend that team captains create a schedule for each session. This way your team will know what to expect and make sure students wrap up in time for breaks, and Bold Idea staff will be able to easily see what your site is working on that week.

Example of a schedule for a virtual session:

3:45 - Zoom room is open
4:00-4:10 - Icebreaker question
4:10-5:00 - Move into breakout rooms and continue working on the learning roadmap
5:00-5:15 - Brain break
5:15-5:55 - Move back into breakout rooms and continue working on the learning roadmap
5:55-6:00 - Post-session debrief with students
6:00-6:05 - Post-session debriefs with mentors

Example of a schedule for an in-person session:

3:45 - mentors and students arrive - students set up laptops
4:00-4:10 - Icebreaker game or recap of the last session
4:10-5:00 - Small group work for projects
5:00-5:15 - Brain Break
5:15-5:50 - Move back into small groups and continue working
5:50-6 - Clean up and wrap up with a debriefing
6-6:15 - Students leave, mentors clean up and leave once all students have left

All sessions, in person or virtual, should include Brain Breaks which is a time when mentors and students can take a break from coding to play a game or even just get up and move around.

Learning Session Resources

Zoom Reference Guide

Zoom can sometimes be difficult to navigate or have issues with bandwidth speeds. We recommend that Team Captains familiarize themselves with zoom and its different functions before the start of their club or camp. If you are leading a virtual session and run into issues with Zoom. Utilize our Zoom Reference Guide

IDE Troubleshooting

Sometimes students will run into bugs with the IDE platform, or there will be a system-wide error that occurs during a session. Check this page to see if you can resolve the issue quickly. If these troubleshooting methods do not fix the issue, contact Bold Idea staff.

Brain Breaks

Brain Breaks are very important to Bold Idea's program structure. Students at any age will need some time each session to take a break from coding. Stepping away from their projects for a quick snack or 5-minute game gives them the chance to refresh and come back to the challenge or project they were working on with fresh minds. We have a list of Brain Breaks used in the past.

First Session Walkthroughs

The first sessions are a little different than all others. During the first session, Team Captains will need to provide students with a quick walkthrough of our student portal . It also might be helpful to do a longer icebreaker on the first day as students may not know each other or the mentors on your team. For your first session, you can utilize the session 1 walkthrough document for your course:

Demo Day Resources

Demo Day is an event that Bold Idea hosts each year to showcase students who have earned badges or finished projects. Students can choose a project or challenge they have finished to present a demo of at demo day. Mentors are also welcome to plan mini demo days at the end of each semester if students would like to share their progress or finished projects with friends and family.

Training Resources

Volunteer Portal

The Volunteer Portal is where all of your training checklist, course information, student lists, attendance log, coding platforms, and course-specific resources are located. Your log-in information will be what you set up when you signed up as a volunteer with Bold Idea.

Bold Idea Volunteer Training Videos

These are the same videos linked to your checklist on the volunteer portal. Please watch all videos for a short overview of your role and what you need to know before your first session of club/camp with Bold Idea.

Courses

All of our curriculum resources that you can find on your volunteer portal are located under the resources tab.

Badges

Badges are awarded to Bold Idea students when they complete a specific coding challenge, guided project, or course curriculum with us. It is the mentors' responsibility to keep tabs on student progress and award a badge when they have met the requirements. These are important for staff, future mentors, parents, and the students to be able to see each individual's progress and what they have and have not learned while with Bold Idea.

Don't know how to Code?

Previous experience with computer science and coding is not required for Bold Idea mentors. If you are a volunteer mentor and have no background in coding - the best way to learn would be to go through your course's curriculum beforehand. You have access to the IDE and learning documents on your volunteer portal.

If you want further resources for how to learn to code here are some online resources that we recommend: