Bridging the Sport-School Gap

Before I begin, I am realizing now that I should have changed that title, because for me the word "gap" has become a stressor. With the achievement gap, the literacy gap, the gaps in our scores and where we need to be, etc, the word has come to indicate things that I must always be thinking about. Frankly, for the amount of sleep I get each night, I have no more brain power to always be thinking about one more thing.

The boys' high school soccer season begins in a few weeks, so I met yesterday with the coaching staff to discuss how I'll be helping out during the season. It sounds like I am going to be working with the JV team and will be the official liaison with the school, since all the other coaches have other day jobs. Of course, to meet and discuss this I had to go to the open gym last night at Richmond High, and since traffic is so horrible, I had the agony of staying at school until 7:30pm until I could meet these guys and the potential players - who are pretty incredible at the game, from what I could see. These guys took me to town when I joined in on the open gym scrimmaging, and the fact that there were a bunch of my students and former students out there makes it difficult to continue my bad-ass soccer player persona I've been slyly playing during school hours. Regardless, I had at least four kids today ask me when I'm coming to open gym again, and it makes me happy seeing that they want to build that relationship with their teacher - even if it's the same teacher that gave them a failing grade last year. In all though, I feel like I may be in over my head. The coaches told me that typically about 200 guys try out for just the Varsity and JV squads, so based on the open gym skills I've seen, I don't know how I'm going to be able to confidently coach these guys when they could juke me out of my shoes. Luckily I think the other coaches are just really happy to have someone to help make sure their star soccer players are also star students. I'm telling you, over half of the students in that gym yesterday had the skills to play in college, if they only had the grades and preparation. The head coach said something like 50% of the graduating players went to 4-year institutions and the percentage was only so low because the rest of them weren't eligible for college admissions...

...And cue the conversation about the differences between high school graduation requirements and college admissions requirements. One of the things that pisses me off so much at our school is that students simply need 30 CREDITS of math throughout their four years, and CREDITS means that they got above an F grade. A passing grade in high school is a C- or better, but colleges' interpretation of passing is a C or better. This means that any D grade, while not acceptable for college, and while preventing the student from moving on to the next class, still provides the student with 5 credits each semester. This means that each year there are countless students that are given their high school diploma after earning 30 credits of math: 9th grade Algebra 1, 10th grade Algebra 1 and 11th grade Algebra 1. So essentially each year Richmond High School spits out a large handful of students that have learned pretty much no math in high school (because the standards for earning a D grade at RHS are pretty much just showing up and showing an ounce of effort). And then since nothing is done to separate kids into advanced or remedial classes, the star students are hindered and the lowest students get neglected, so the percentage of students "Far Below Basic" in math proficiency never changes and a class like my 2nd period Precalculus class becomes more of a comprehensive everything-up-to-Precalculus review class for the first three months. It's sad, frustrating, angering, and exhausting all at once. The worst part is realizing that most of the system is so far out of my control, and then having to find a way to let it go.

At least when soccer season starts it'll give me leverage with some of my more difficult students...