"Coaching" English

It is unbelievably frustrating to hear someone say, “He/she only got hired because they coach.” Just because someone is a coach,does NOT mean that they are automatically an awful teacher. Coaching is a small part of the makeup of a person. Something that they are passionate about? You bet. But that doesn’t mean that they are not equally as passionate about their subject that they teach. 

Coaches get to leave school early? Yes, everyone sees that. What they don’t see is the coach coming back and staying until midnight to get everything done- they don’t see the connections that are made outside of the classroom with students that lead to more success inside it- they don’t see young men and women learning that there are more important things that winning or losing a game- they don’t see the hours that are spent trying to come up with the perfect game plan and perfect practice schedules-they don’t see the sleepless nights after a tough loss or an amazing victory. 

It is so easy to bash those who are hired “just because they coach.”  Did we not have to still go through the same accredited college program that you went through? Did we not have to go through the exact same Praxis test that you did? All the while (most of us) being a part of a college sport that took up 4 to 5 hours of our day with practice, weights, study tables and individual meetings. Thats not even counting all the game nights that we were gone until the early morning hours and still made it to our 7:00 class because we knew coach would run us into the ground if we didn’t. 

Was that our choice? Absolutely it was, and most of us would make that same decision again in a heartbeat. It was also your choice not to, and there is nothing wrong with that. It takes all kinds of teachers and people to make the world go round. However, to blankly judge someone’s teaching ability, based solely on the fact that they are a coach, is about as ignorant as to say that someone is a poor teacher because they teach English.

Are there coaches who are poor teachers? Of course there are- but those two do not always go hand in hand.