The Teacher I Never Had Inside the Classroom by Kathryn

The Teacher I Never Had Inside the Classroom by Kathryn - July 2014 Scholarship Essay

The teacher who had the greatest affect on me was not one that I had the pleasure of experiencing in the classroom. In fact, she didn't even teach at my school. My basketball coach was an administrative enforcement officer at one of my local high schools. This occupation meant that she had the joy of punishing students once they were removed from the classroom because of misconduct. It also meant that in cases where the teacher couldn't be in the classroom due to absence or personal reasons, she stepped in and took over their position.

When I first met coach and she told my team and I stories from her work, we were shocked. It was crazy to think that our coach, who we affectionately called "shortie" was able to take control of a situation, especially ones of great magnitude. The one thing that every story ended with, was a happy ending with the student being more focused as well as more respectful. We never understood how she was able to manipulate situations into the outcomes she always seemed to get. By the end of the season, our team had become another one of her success stories. We had six players make it onto the All-Academic team for our conference, including myself, we also had an average team GPA of 3.7 and report card average of 90.1 which surprised even ourselves.

Throughout the season, coach reinforced the importance of academics, even setting aside two hours each day for study hall and special study sessions for our midterms. In the end this work paid off, no matter how much we may have disliked her for it at the time.

Coach also made sure the whole team knew how important the four high school years were. We had guest speakers who came to some of our practices to talk about regrets and made sure that we understood that in order for us to not have any regrets, we needed to give 110 percent, both on and off the court.
Through the four and a half month long season, I learned a lot from coach. I think that the most important thing I learned from her was to leave it all out there and make sure you gave it everything you had no matter what your role was. Even if you made mistakes or the outcome isn't exactly what you wanted, you can have a peace of mind knowing that you gave it everything you had, and you have another opportunity right around the corner. This is a lesson that I will keep with me throughout my life journey. By "leaving it all out there" whether the place be an operating room, classroom, courtroom, conference room, or where ever life takes me, I know that I will not have a single regret.