If your grades are low, so are your chances of staying on any sports team in the state of Washington. Washington laws force primary schools to prioritize education before sports. But why? Of course, students should be focusing on their education, but how can schools expect every single student to be in the same stage of development, as your average American student who has no problem learning?
Let’s say a new high school student from Brazil moves to the United States and doesn’t know English at all, meaning they can only understand and speak Portuguese. They want to join an athletic program at school, but because said hypothetical student doesn’t speak English, it will most definitely be more difficult for them to learn.
At most, high schools in the United States can print out a paper in a different language that a student speaks, teach a verbal lesson, and if the student is lucky, they will get translations of the lesson. Teachers who only speak one English will mainly focus on the students who also speak English, knowing it would be harder to educate a student who doesn’t speak the teacher’s main language.
How can we expect a hypothetical transfer student to pass six to seven classes and play a sport? What if their passion is that sport?
According to most sports players, sports are 50% mentality and 50% skill, if not 50% mentality, then it’s 100%. This is because the way your mind thinks, also affects how you play. If this hypothetical transfer student is more focused on trying to catch up with their assignments, they will be stressed and worried about losing their chance to play on the sports program that they wish to be in.
In my opinion, we need to change the way we look at students. Schools can’t just assume all students will learn and develop the same as an average person, just like how not every student will have the same grade in math class. How can we expect it be the same in the other six classes? If a child is failing some classes and you kick them off their sports team, that will just cause even more stress, since they will be so scared of losing their spot on their team permanently. This could potentially make them end up falling down a rabbit hole of bad grades because of that stress.
The hypothetical student’s mental health is going down along with their grades. And once they lose their spot on the team permanently, when it was their biggest passion, all that will circle through their mind and make a big on their confidence, depending on how attached they were to that sport. Once again making their grades even worse. If the school wants their students to pass classes and be on a sport, then take a look from the angle of the students. The school needs to make small exceptions and understand your students.