Congrats in advance! You put in a LOT of work, and I'm excited for you. Keep those instructors and fellow candidates in your rolodex; they'll be the best resource you get from the course. Any thoughts of going on to the B, or is it too soon? [emoji12]
To get into a B course you have to be a full time coach working in a high level environment. Essentially, the C is the end of the line for everyone else. Our instructors pretty much told us it's not even worth applying unless you're working with a DA, college, or pro program where you're going to have a chance to use the new knowledge you gain. Soooo maybe in 20 years when I can afford to take the pay cut that would come with a career change...
Ugh, it is what it is but you look at Spain, Germany, Iceland and they have A licenses working with 6 year olds. the knowledge you gain is probably overkill for 6YOs but it's the type of person that seeks continuous education.
Not true. And they shouldn't be telling you that. I can tell you that in mine, we only had 2 DA coaches (out of 36), and the one a colleague is in currently has none. Not trying to push you to apply, but if your resume is good and you have access to an 11v11 team, you can get in. You don't even need a high level team yet.
The two coaches I know that have gotten Bs recently are in DA and college—so I had no reason to doubt that was true. But maybe, if it is, we only have to wait 9 months before the Federation winds shift again.
I don't think you're wrong. I doubt being in a DA environment hurts one's chances to get in; if you have a good resume with continued education, one has a good chance, I think. I suspect there are enough "new" B holders now that DAs don't need to apprentice B holders (and then rush to get them into B courses). I think resume is way more important than environment.
I will say this: because of the rigor, time commitment and cost, it is definitely easier to be a full-time coach is taking the B.
I just posted this in another thread but this is a bit more appropriate.. Has anyone recently applied to, and heard back from, the USSF regarding the upcoming B licences? Its been a month and no word yet.
Revisions to assignments are due Monday night, and I still have 4 that haven't even been graded yet. Looks like I better block off my calendar for Monday just in case I have to spend all day redoing them. This is the kind of thing that pisses me off.
What do you mean that revisions are due? The instructors adjust the due dates after submission? Having assignments sit for a while isn't too weird, though I completely understand wanting them graded early.
The course assignments and schedule is set at the start of the course. Work product is submitted and graded. Sometimes instructors will simply pass an item as completed. Often they want "revisions" made to the work, which has to submitted with the revisions by a specified date in the course schedule. If the instructors are late grading the work, it eats up the time before the due date.
Assignments have due dates, and then the instructors review them and either mark them "satisfactory" or "revision requested". They gave us a final due date for the requested revisions to be submitted. It's part of the "experiential learning" that is part of the (current) USSF philosophy. My impression is that assignments are intentionally left vague so that you do what you think is required instead of going down the checklist. Then the instructor gives you some minimally useful feedback on ways to improve it to hopefully reach the satisfactory level that your particular instructor has in mind. In essence, it's a hide the ball exercise. We had 3 instructors and two different versions of the course guide for our course. On most assignments, we had 4 different descriptions of what was required: 1 from the instructor who presented the material in the classroom, 1 from the original course guide, 1 from the updated course guide, and 1 from our individual instructor who actually does the grading. Oh, and the lead instructor would also give his opinion on most assignments so that makes 5.
That sounds nightmarish. In the ones I've done, there were due dates. At the end of each course meeting, the lead instructor painstakingly explained each assignment (in fact, the last day was mostly just this seemingly). The due dates didn't change (except performance wheel). Basically, you submitted an assigned by said due date, and if revision was needed, you got that done in your own time. Now, on the B and above, there is a final date they all must be done (greenlit), but the instructors did work to help candidates be ready. No coddling, but they didn't look to catch candidates in a bind. On those courses, there was one vision. The instructors met amongst themselves and reflected on everything, and one person gave us the details. Makes it so much better than your experience. Changing the documents mid-course would have aggravated me a lot.
Multiple times throughout the course the lead instructor has said something along the lines of "if you think you're doing a lot of work, think about us. We each have to grade 12 of your assignments." Now, I don't know what these instructors get paid to teach these courses, but I'm sure part of their compensation includes the time they spend grading work. And if we don't get all of our work in by the deadline stated, we're removed from the course. That's regardless of what's going on at home in our personal lives (say having a 5 month old who doesn't sleep, dealing with losing two staff at the office, and coaching my team on top of that). But if an instructor can't get their work done, they'll just push it back. And we haven't received the evaluation forms that we're supposed to use to evaluate the instructors yet even though we were told we'd get them before final grades were published.
That is dismal. With all due respect, the instructors are paid for their time and need not reference the supposed martyrdom of grading when working with mostly nervous candidates. Sorry you guys had to experience that. The instructors I interacted with on the new A were markedly different. Actually cared about progress of candidates. Still talk to mine monthly almost a year after.
C was just announced for my state assoc. It's not up on US Soccer website yet. Hopefully, I can get in! Still concerned about finding an high-level 11v11 team to coach though.
Good luck. Just make sure to check the DLC daily. As long as you have an 11v11 team to record with, you should be fine.