After school and on the weekends, teacher Aven Snyder puts on her sweats and t-shirt and coaches K-1 flag football as a head coach. Down the A hall in classroom A204, sits Aven Snyder. She teaches World History, Psychology and Sociology.
Snyder has been a teacher at GlenOak High School for seven years and coached K-1 flag football for one year. She has only been coaching the K-1 flag this year. She is still finding her place, her voice and the confidence to not let people undermine her on the field. Snyder has added to her plate and taken on the role of head coach on the K-1 team. She has to find a balance to not burn herself out.
“Teaching is hard to juggle in it and on itself, the addition of coaching adds more to the plate. I work pretty much from seven am to seven pm and deal with parents from teaching and football. I have to find time to plan both plays for the K-1 flag and school plans,” Snyder said.
Snyder struggles with the stress that she puts on herself and tends to try to take on the students’ and kid’s issues.
“While teaching I tend to take the emotional stuff home and to practice. If a kid goes home to a bad situation or something happens I take that stress home, that’s the biggest struggle for both,” Snyder said.
Snyder not only found a way to take it slow but in a different way in a view of her own. To take on her problems and the ones that she puts on herself.
“My son is on my team and sometimes I feel like I don’t give him enough attention because I’m a single parent. Spending that time with him helps with that part of my life and having other coaches to talk to, not just mom telling him what to do,” Snyder said. “Also to have all my plans already out to take the stress out and in the morning I make plays to send to the other coaches.”
Even through all the stress that Snyder goes through with balancing both coaching and teaching, she doesn’t let it show to her students.
“She is super confident, very kind, caring, and she will sit down and help unlike some teachers,” junior Tatyana Lowe said.
Snyder puts her stress aside to make the students feel this way, throughout the time that Snyder has been teaching she has had many many experiences with students that she has taught and the way she deals with them. Also, the interactions she has had with the students years down the road.
“Students have come years later. I had been to a baby shower of a student that had graduated seven years ago,” Snyder said. “They were one of the struggling students and to see them thrive the way they are now made me feel great. As of now, I think the reward is having a bond with a student and then looking at how students are involved and the students taking what she teaches and using it out in the world or in the school.”
Even though this is Snyder’s first year coaching she has already made so many moments with the little kids and connections with them.
“Seeing some of the kids who haven’t played football before and seeing them now to start to take to football. one of the little kids was able to almost pull one of the faster kids’ flags and see them evolve and spread out,” Snyder said. “Watching the kids work together and be there for the team, and seeing the kids come out like her own son who plays came out of his shell and he has been goofy and connect with the kids and he feels like he has a best but now he knows he can work harder and doesn’t need to be the best.”
Snyder puts in the effort to work with her students and the K-1 kids alike having good and bad days. No matter how stressed or unbalanced Snyder may be she will always find time for the kids that she is teaching and coaching.
