The person who most influenced me is my high school football coach and my algebra teacher Coach Jackson, Coach Jackson influenced me for several reasons. He is the first person who really let me know that school beyond high school is obtainable and not just some big myth. I live in a community that if you don’t leave after graduation then most likely you will never leave, it is also a community that doesn’t have a lot of wealth people or very highly educated people which isn’t a very shocking correlation to me at all. So when I first met Coach Jackson,it was kind of intimidating because he is a very big black man who demanded a lot of his students and his athletes and since I was both he really paid close attention to me at all times. He was a graduate from the same high school that he teaches and coaches at, his father was in the military so he always held us to the same standard that he was held to and that made him kind of a task master to his student athletes. He was in his mid twenties but he has accomplished a lot in his young life, he received a track scholarship to Baylor and later went on to represent the U.S. in the Olympics in Sydney,Australia.
He opened my eyes to the possibility of going to college after high school and having the opportunity of bettering my life through academics. Before I met him I didn’t really know anyone who has gone to a major university and finish with a degree in anything. So the thought has always came to if he can do it then why not me; I remember one day in class he made us do a project , he made each individual student pick a college across the U.S. and since most student in the class have never left Texas the majority of the classroom picked the University of Texas in Austin. This obviously disappointed Coach Jackson, so he took a quick poll across the classroom, the poll was who in this room plans on going to college. To this day it saddens me so say that no one in the room including me raised his or her hand.A response that clearly disappointed Coach Jackson even more than before,he immediately stopped the lesson plan for the day and began to explain the importance of pursuing higher education after high school and answered any questions we had about college.
Not surprisingly most of the questions where about money he proceeded to inform us of the available money that was out there for us to use on tuition. That was about three years ago and I still remember that class discussion like it happened yesterday, that discussion pretty much changed my life and made me rededicate myself to school. Instead of coming to school and just going through the motions all day for four years then not know what to do after graduation. I am a better person for meeting Coach Jackson.
