Today, I was informed that my goalkeeper was off the team. He had a 39 in english. My assistant coach had somehow gotten grades early, and informed his mother, and that was that.
Charlie will graduate this May. My assistant coach just dropped him off at home (at 11 PM) after a tutoring session. He or my other assistant coach will take him all day Saturday, and I'll take him on Sunday. If he never plays another game with us, he'll graduate. If he gets his grades up to the point where he can play again, great. But he is a part of something. He has people who care about him, who won't let him slip through the cracks. This makes all the difference in the world, and that fact that I can be one of those people - not the most influential or important, but just that I can be one of those people, is a success for me.
This leads me to believe that schools with 1700 students are a bad idea. There aren't enough things for everyone to be a part of. Two schools of 850 each would have two football teams, two soccer teams (maybe), two cheerleading squads, two track teams, two x-c teams, and nearly twice as many kids feeling like they belong to something. My research paper didn't find any sort of link between athletics and academic performance, but I trust my gut over my research. It's important to belong to something, especially at 16, 17, 18 years old.
1 comment:
Our students suffer disproportionately because everything seems to favor the Greenville campus.
It's not just sports. It's clubs that actually meet and do things. It's having plays and musicals in which the student's can participate.
It's school spirit. I mean, we can't even get a powderpuff game together.
Big schools can have a lot of opportunities to include all students. Our problem is that we are too unorganized. And I doubt much would change even if we had 2 smaller schools.
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