Reflecting on my original goals for the completion of Michigan State University’s (MSU) Master of Arts in Education (MAED) program with a concentration in Sport Leadership and Coaching, I find my goals of leadership and working with students and student athletes to be the same. As a former student athlete (both in high school and during my undergraduate work) I know the struggles of prioritizing academics, sport, job, and maintaining some sort of social interaction and I still aspire to help student athletes perform this juggling act successfully.

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However, the stage in their academic career in which I will be working with them, has changed. Originally, I planned to utilize my continued knowledge in the MAED program to help create programs that would enhance student athletes’ success in all areas of their undergraduate pursuits – the whole student athlete or “The Total Person” as Georgia Tech’s (GT) Dr. Homer Rice coined it being my main source of inspiration (read more about GT’s program here). I aspired to be a Director or Assistant Director of a Division II sized university's Student Athlete Support Services department, perhaps focusing on Academic Success and Life Skills as mentioned on GT's site.

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Somewhere throughout the MAED program, I felt a tug. At first, I thought perhaps, it was being forced to reflect back on my experiences as a high school teacher and coach so often that made me nostalgic for old times – that I was just mixing feelings of the past with future desires; making my specific goals muddy and hard to see. Eventually, I found myself asking, who needs your leadership more, high school student athletes preparing for college and life or college student athletes preparing to be life-long learners in whatever pursuit comes next? I began entertaining returning to K-12 teaching and coaching or maybe as an Assistant Principal with coaching responsibilites or Athletic Director. I didn’t have an answer right away; this definitely took some pondering, growing, and more reflection.

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Finally, during my Teacher Education (TE 846) course, in which I was able to create literacy focused lessons and actually teach again, I found my answer: public K-12. Not to say that some colleges and universities are without need for leadership for student athletes, but it is also safe to say that it is a popular line of work with few positions available. A required interview for another MAED course (EAD 877) helped me fully realize this. My interview with one of the staff in MSU’s Student Athlete Support Services (SASS) helped me realize something, that there are so many resources on campuses for all students. Bigger athletic programs, like MSU, are lucky to be able to create their own, but many colleges with smaller programs utilize different departments already on campus: writing and math centers, peer tutors, academic advisors, career services, and community outreach to name a little more than a few. Public high schools, as an administrator and coach, is where I see myself in the future - helping my future school with reaching the whole student athlete. Given my own high school athlete experience in a struggling district, I had some of the most positive and most negative experiences with athletics. Although I feel the positive far outweigh the negative, I want my leadership to minimize the negative and help ensure the best student athlete experience for high school students.