You’ve probably noticed Certification being a bit quiet recently. We put out a survey for officials a couple years ago, and heard back, and then we put out another survey for skaters, and we heard back. Our own Don Scoreleone in collaboration with TaraByte who oversees Certification as a Board member are putting together results and recommendations for next steps, which should be ready soon. Three Cert Oversight members are also up for election right now, Don Scoreleone, Eggs, and Slaine.
So, what happens once we see the results and hear our recommendations and learn who is “running the ship” for the next year? That is probably going to be a bigger conversation in which we start gearing up to rethink a lot of our core tenants and practices, and start to think about what the next iteration of Certification will look like. Certification today is the third version:
the first version launched in 2008 - you may recall this as five-level cert where NSO was Level 1…
version 2 was released in 2012 - the years of “the Hellahard;” NSO and Ref cert were separate tracks, and Level 1 was education-only.
The current version launched in 2018 (eight years ago)! This is the longest version yet for a single Certification system, and it has scaled well – we’re currently on-time despite ending up a few months behind as all of the Level 3’s recertified!
But it’s time to start preparing for version 4.
So if you already filled out the survey, amazing. And if you asked your skaters to fill out their survey, even more amazing. But what if you didn’t? And what if you have something else to add? There is now a form for that: Feedback to Certification Oversight it provides feedback directly to Cert Oversight, for us to read. Responses go directly into our inboxes, and it’s anonymous – you don’t need to tell us who you are to use it (but you can, and please do if you want us to reply to something).
And we’re bringing back office hours, time when you can ask direct questions (either live or in advance), and see our answers “live” (or later, via a recorded zoom)! Our next times will be July 27 19h00 GMT, August 3 03h00 GMT and you can register to attend or pre-register a question to be answered on the recorded stream here: Registration for Certification Office Hours
And finally, we’re in-person at Roller con (well Danger Muffin and Don Scoreleone are) , doing a seminar on how the current system works and answering any questions anyone has! It’s in the S1 room at 12:30pm on Saturday, July 11th.
These channels for feedback are additional to the other ones such as emailing certification@wftda.com if you have any questions (100% human-read and answered), or using certoversighthead@wftda.com if the matter is more private.
I’m posting here rather than through any of the email channels, because the biggest change I would like to see in certification is more transparency. So this is part of me being the change I want to see in the world.
The next biggest thing I want to see is a drastic reduction in the work required by people who aren’t the individual applying for certification. In short: Nobody owes me labor in my pursuit of (re)certification.
To expand on that, the current system requires three or four OOSes, depending on the level being applied for. The instructions say the person writing the OOS should set aside 1-2 hours for the task. My experience is that it is usually on the high end of that range. We are literally asking for multiple people to donate two hours of unpaid labor (intellectual, and often emotional) so someone else can get certified. On top of that, evaluations are “not required” but “strongly suggested”. This is additional unpaid labor, that nobody owes me.
What’s more, the sheer amount of writing in these documents is excessive relative to the observation. As a point of reference, at my real job as a professor at a liberal arts college that has eschewed letter grades in favor of narrative evaluations, I’m expected to write approximately half a page for every four credits a student earns. Over a ten week quarter, those four credits should reflect four hours per week of direct in-class observation, plus about eight hours per week of homework. In total, my job (which I get paid for) expects me to write about a half a page evaluation based on 40 hours of direct observation plus 80 hours of indirect assessment based on assignments. The “Useful Example Evaluation[s]” on the WFTDA page “How to Review an Official” are of a similar length. This tells me that WFTDA expects evaluators to be able to provide an same amount of detail, which requires 120 hours over 10 weeks in my day job, in 1-6 hours of direct observation over a weekend. The OOS, of course, requires even more detail. It seems like the expectation is that OOSes will be written by someone with a long-term working relationship to the evaluated official. However, it’s an extra burden for the many independent officials who don’t have the opportunity to regularly worth with peers and mentors at scrimmages. This goes double for the independent official looking for an OOS from an athlete or athletic representative; there are few people in that category who are well qualified to assess (e.g.) someone’s ability at being a PBM, especially if that person only gets the opportunity to fill that role with other leagues, and none of them owe anyone that amount of labor. As a personal point of reference, despite the fact that I have performed every role on and off-skates multiple times over the past year, I can’t think of a single athlete, or even a single league, that has been present to witness at least one performance of each.
So that’s a lot of writing about how there’s too much writing involved in the certification process. My suggestion is simple: Emphasize experience more than evaluations. If someone has performed a certain role dozens of times in sanctioned play, and keeps getting staffed in that role, nobody needs to write down that they perform that role well. If they do something exceptionally well, that’s worth a note. But I honestly think a note along the lines of “PBMy McPBMFace handle an ABA swap very smoothly” is a “useful” evaluation in its entirety.
Hi – just a note that nobody signed up for office hours tomorrow so, they are now cancelled. Good news is that folks are using the many other routes to contact us, so, please keep that up (and we see the +13 on your post, Bacon, we’ll discuss that too in our next meeting)!
August 3rd is still open, but nobody’s signed up for that either, so we’ll cancel it the night before if it will also be empty, and use the other routes to keep seeking feedback from Membership.