Whether it’s directing a play or heading a club, many New Trier teachers commit their free time to aiding students in their pursuits outside the classroom and to teaching life lessons on top of book lessons.
Some of the most popular extra-curricular activities that teachers lead are sports through the athletic department.
According to Randy Oberembt, New Trier’s athletic director, 25-30% of teachers coach a sport. New Trier teachers constitute 180 of the 225 coaches at the school, and some partake in multiple sports. The other 45 coaches come from schools like Sears, Wilmette Junior High, Maine South, and Deerfield.
New Trier is fortunate to employ coaches with a historically low turnover rate. “It’s a tribute to the community, it’s a tribute to the work done by generations of coaches, the quality of the students, and that [New Trier] is considered a pretty good place to teach and coach,” said Oberembt.
The low turnover in the coaching staff may also be attributed to the careful evaluation and selection processes put forth by the athletic department. Head coaches are evaluated chiefly on the basis of about 8 to 10 sit-down meetings, general feedback about their status as a coach, and observation of them working. The department solicits student feedback on how they’re being coached and take that into consideration. Parent feedback carries less weight in the evaluation process.
“The first thing that we would look for is an individual who has a real keen understanding of the social/emotional development of young people,” Oberembt said, adding that keeping kids safe is also of primary concern.
Field hockey head coach Stephanie Nykaza, who has coached at New Trier for 24 years and has taught for 15, said one of her responsibilities as a coach is to teach life lessons.
“That’s what you get out of athletics,” Nykaza said. “I’ve been doing it as long as I can remember, but it’s to teach them how to problem solve, how to work with people, how to work hard, and realize that you can gain fuel out of failure and get through those obstacles in life. ”
Marc Tadelman, who taught and coached for 13 years before coming to New Trier as a Kinetic Wellness teacher and head wrestling coach fin 2008 also said coaching is about teaching life lessons.
“A lot of the life lessons that I try to teach are teaching kids to work, to balance academics and athletics and social life, and to make smart decisions outside of the classroom and on the field,” he said. “I think coaches have to do a lot of stuff behind the scenes. It’s not just teaching wrestling moves, or teaching how to shoot a basketball, or pitch a ball, it’s all-inclusive where you have to teach about other things too.”
Beyond what they view as the mandatory facets of their jobs, these coaches seem to harbor a great passion for their sports and for working with teenagers. “I love [teaching and coaching]” Nykaza said. “I love working with teenagers. As much as they make me laugh, they get me angry. They give me fuel, a sense of impacting them in different ways. We wouldn’t be putting all these hours into what we do as a head coach if we didn’t love it.”
Oberembt said that when it comes to evaluating coaches, they are compared to the athletic department’s mission. This mission includes what they view as the three focal points of coaching. 1. whether or not the coaches are good in terms of preparing teams to compete, 2. whether the coach is good technically and making sure the students are properly learning their games, and 3. whether they are good at building relationships with students and fostering their social/emotional growth.