Coaching Success, Teaching Failure
Cross Country running is not an ideal sport for a 250 pound kid with a history of medical problems, including having a stroke as a young boy and a current struggle with epilepsy. Learning what he needs to in a school without the kinds of services he is supposed to have with his severe learning disability is close to impossible.
When he didn’t make the football team in the fall of 2007, he came to me asking to run for my squad. Since his physical papers were already cleared, I told him to go ahead and jog two laps to get warmed up. He barely made it 100 meters before having to stop and, wheezing, catch his breath. I asked if he wanted to take a break and he did; I tell him today that he had the shortest cross country practice in the history of the sport.
He easily could have quit. I didn’t have much to entice him to stay. There were only a few other guys on the team and not a lot of camaraderie yet. I had quickly learned that distance running is a tough sell in an inner city! But he continued to show up. And the thing I love most about distance running is that you can’t help but get better if you just run each day.
At the city relay meet two months later, set up around a mile long reservoir, he took the baton as the anchor leg for our team. We were already in last place, but place didn’t matter in this case. I prayed that he would finish. Though are school is typically referred to as a dumping ground for troubled students and a place where gangs and violence flourish, he wore his jersey as proud as any athlete. And after 15 minutes, he came trudging to the home stretch drenched in sweat, with spit all over his face into a crowd that cheered him on like he was an Olympic champion.
Every time he goes by the reservoir now, he says he looks at it and goes “Oh, Yea.” With simple determination and perseverance, this young man has somehow made it. I think he’s made it farther than the smartest, most athletic, brightest or richest. This fall, he made the football team.
Amazingly, he is also getting an opportunity to transfer to a school with the services he desperately needs for his learning disability. That’s because our school is dissolving. It has failed, according to city administrators, so they are shutting it down in the middle of the year.
For many students, this is a blessing in disguise, though it’s sad to be moved away from friends and the familiarity of the school. For teachers, there’s a real sense that we failed. Many are uncertain as to where they’ll be placed. Many of the teachers have been teaching without certificates, so they’ll be out of a job in June. For the community, I think it’s a wake up call.
Closing failed, unstable and dangerous schools, as ours was deemed, is a harsh but necessary part of ending the achievement gap. To see schools like ours, which was once a very proud place, shut down, leaves you very empty though. No one can know what really has gone on in here, the hours put in trying so hard to teach the kids.
The media zipped in and out last week to report on this school. I’ve been here close to two years and news reports wrapped it all up in under two minutes. I talked to some of the reporters coming in for their stories and asked them where they’ve been. It’s not like the school just suddenly got so bad.
I’m not an advocate of researching “root causes” for every social ill. But I believe people in the country have become accustomed to these two minute clips or 600 word articles that attempt to sum up the bare bone facts regarding a problem (the achievement gap) that is such an embarrassment for our country.
Certain students will continue to stay at the school until the end of the year, and I am one of the teachers who have been told to remain until June. I will let you know what’s going on and how this plays out.
For kids like my favorite athlete, it’s a real blessing. But thinking back to why this all happened, I just can’t help but marvel at the fact that teachers, administrators, coaches and students allowed a perfectly good opportunity to learn and live be ruined by incompetence, disorganization and violence.