The Graduation Coach

Sandy Garrett, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, had an editorial about graduation coaches on the opinion page of the Muskogee Phoenix a few weeks ago. A graduation coach is a person who would "help motivate and inspire students to push themselves further than (they would have gone) by choice." Silly me - I've actually thought that was my job as a teacher for the last 33 years! Ideally, it is the job of everyone with whom a teen comes into contact throughout his day at home and at school.

To start with, though, I want to ask who abdicated their responsibility and let all these kids drop out of school in the first place? The first graduation coach is at home; everyone knows that, Mom and Dad. Still, many schools all across the U.S. are showing only an 80% graduation rate, despite constant contact between the school and the home, and near begging by school personnel for absentee students to come to school and graduate. Many schools bend over backwards to find ways, any way, to help students complete school. It's there just for the taking. The flip side of that is that it can feel like parent and child are being hammered by the system from all sides, when in actuality the school (or court system) is only trying to help.

Secondly, most Oklahoma school systems have enough personnel on staff now to meet the requirements fulfilled by a graduation coach. There are teachers, counselors, at risk counselors, special education counselors, parent liaisons, athletic coaches, extracurricular sponsors, federal programs, and mentors already. And one more person acting as a graduation coach is going to solve the problem? It's that simple? Really, just one more person? Each one of the people listed above past "teachers" were supposedly that "one more person" who would solve the problem of at risk students.

I have an idea - let's hire one testing coordinator for the at risk school systems and let the counselors and other personnel do the jobs they signed on to do. Few people went into counseling to become testing coordinators - they went into counseling with the same goals as they started out with in teaching - to help kids have better lives. Since the inception of No Child Left Behind, however, our counselors have become more test administrators than counselors. If these people could focus on their assigned students, more could be accomplished than by adding just one graduation coach to the staff. These people and all the ones mentioned above are the graduation coaches.

Graduation coaching is a job for all of us. Garrett, whom I greatly admire, says "legendary coaches like Bud Wilkinson and Henry Iba built foundations of success in our state on high standards, preparation and discipline." There she hit upon the crux of the problem that hiring no amount of graduation coaches will solve - the question of how to have discipline in a disciplineless society? Of how to have high expectations for education in a society that does not value education? Of how to prepare students who won't prepare their lessons? I applaud what Garrett has achieved during her tenure in improving Oklahoma's schools - it is a tough job.

And these are tough questions that adding just one person to the faculty will not solve. Increasing the graduation rate is a job for all of us. It requires cooperation from many entities and people, but most of all from the very people who are in jeopardy of failing - the students.

But, if that one person, the graduation coach, can save just one more person (from prison, from premature parenthood, from a life of poverty, from abject personal failure and the sinking depression and resignation that comes from it), it may be a worthwhile investment of the public's money.

See the state of Georgia's model graduation coach program at
http://gadoe.org/tss_school_improve.aspx?PageReq=TSSGraduationCoach