Academic Plan

What does your plan look like?

I would tell you that punishment is not the answer.

Do you teach in the building where you coach?

I would offer before school study sessions.

I would offer after school study sessions.

I would ask staff to help support in focused areas i.e. English, Math, etc. a couple days a week

I would attempt to utilize peers both on the team and in the building to help with academic support

Focus on organization and individualized plan for each student athlete

Keep the parents/guardians involved

Provide a virtual option if needed for support

I also wouldn't require for just at-risk. I would utilize all players on the team or in your group so they don't feel isolated or being put out there in front of others

Find success in previous classes or with certain teachers and see if you can pick up any strategies that may have been successful

Create a contract with player involvement to create benchmarks the need to reach. Have the student, parent, and others sign so everyone knows the expectation.

This is something I've been looking for as a plan. Thank you for that. The question now becomes what is the punishment for:
1) If they're failing do you let them play? Or do you cut playing time no matter what?
2) If a player refuses to take the learning/tutoring/study hall session, what the consequence for that?

I don't know what your schools policy is on agenda's, binders, teachers posting when assignments are due, etc. But I have found that if you require struggling students to keep an agenda of what is due and when, have their teacher sign it as accurate, and then show you the completed work, it goes a long way to improving grades.

There may be a lot of reasons as to why kids are struggling, but it almost always manifests itself in incomplete, rushed, or missing work. Yeah, there will always be a few teachers on campus that will have a class where they don't actually educate- so kids will try hard but still not learn and fail; but for the most part if a kids is doing the work they will at least pull a passing grade. One- because they are getting their assignments done, and two, in getting the work done they are better prepared for assessments.

I would recommend you create some sort of daily agenda where academically struggling players are mandated to track work that is due, have their teachers sign that the agenda is accurate, and then you (or a member of your staff) check the work. Ensure they are putting forth a good effort, not just rushing to get it done, and hold them accountable.

Be consistent in checking their grades. Let them know you aren’t the punisher, you are there to help them succeed. Let them know there are certain academic parameters to play football and other sports at your school. Then create an environment in football that they love so much they never want to miss it and do their work.

We never had an ineligible player when I was a head coach. There was never surprises. We knew their grades and if they started to get low we communicated to them they needed to bring them up. And they did. Out of season we couldn’t do anything and in season we didn’t do anything. Just talk about if you love football you will keep your grades up. In season if it would have gotten bad we would have sat them but we never had to do that.

It’s so easy to pass classes these days. If kids love football, they will do what they are supposed to do. If they don’t, they should probably move on.

I didn’t do much well as a head coach but we connected with the kids on this one. At a school that was threat of academic takeover by the state. Just hammer home if kids love football and they love their teammates they will pass classes.

I wish I could add more but just know who’s getting close to the line and communicate with them.

I don't know if any of the following are things that were already said, but here are some of the things that I continue to do to ensure at the very least that my athletes are eligible. 
* I do teach in my building so this does help

1. Communicate with your parents.  I call, email, text all of my parents.  In some cases, parents are unaware that little Johnny is failing.  It helps.  Also, call when they do well.  Goes a very long way. 

2.  Take your kids that are habitually failing and enroll them in your home room (if you have something like that) and explain to them why.  My HR has about 15 more than other teachers, but they're my guys, and in most cases my HR runs very well. 

3. Offer second semester study table and let parents know about it.  Any kid that is failing 1 or more classes, must come to study table  - I only run study table 2x a week and that is just enough to keep kids focused and know that you are serious about it.  The incentive is when you are passing all classes, you have the option to not attend.  You will find that most will want to stay anyway. 

4. Create an on-going point system.  We take all of our kids and assign them to Militaty named companies (Alpha, Bravo, etc) and put a senior to be in charge of each group.  Then kids are awarded various point level amounts for attending study table, working out, playing a winter or spring sport, etc.  You can create that how you like.  But then what I do is I divided up the calendar into 4 quarters between the day you start it and the first day of practice.  At the end of each quarter I award the winning company with a 'Quarter Champion" t-shirt.  They love it.  Also this is helpful to keep kids in their companies throughout the season - assign a position coach to each company as well.  In season, you can easily have them go to their companies for any type of team competition, fundraising, punishments, etc. 

5. turn into Rain Man regarding their individual academics.  I pretty much check on individual grades for my kids every 3-4 days.  Over time, you start memorizing schedules, grades, etc just by simply looking at them so much.  Then in the hallway, when you pull them over for 1:1 informal convos or whatever and you talk with them and mention specifics about their grades you can see them become initially shocked that you "know so much about them" (they actually really like the attention - they just won't tell you) and then they develop that trust with you. 

IDK, those are some things that I still do and it works for me.  

Read my post

They don't play

THanks guuys, I really appreciate all the information, and advice.

coachwoodall , my apologies I somehow missed that the first time I read your post. These are the things I need to really correct/tighten up my Academic Plan.

cqmiller I want my program to exemplify doing things the right in every way, which hopefully still translates to wins, but winning is not my most important aspiration. THanks for enforcing this belief.

I used to check grades all the time, year round too. I would send little rewards to football players who made the honor roll. A post card and a pack of Smarties candy. Yeah it is cheesy but cheap and shows I care. I would send a post card to those failing and telling to seek help if needed, that I could help them and if I could not then I would help facilitate getting help from the teacher. At one point a mom got really pissed off at me in the spring for "bullying" her son into getting good grades. Other than that we did study table in-season which worked really well at first. But later I ran out of coaches in the building (we all taught in the middle school or out of the district later on). That is key to have a coach over there who can start that whom the players will not jack around and actually use the time. We gave out helmet stickers for various in-game and in-practice things but also for making the honor roll each quarter the previous school year.

I love the part from coachwoodall where the teacher can intercede. To me not all kids are created equal. any kid that can get a teacher to intercede has to be doing things right in class, they may just struggle with said subject or had a bad day. Most of the time in todays academic setting the kids that fail, fail bc they dont give a crap. It's not because they arent smart enough. Its because they are lazy. That kinda forces me to ask ... WHY NOT PUNISH??? Again, I dont wanna punish the kid that works hard to scratch out a D bc hes just not very smart, but the kid that knows all my blitzes and plays and checks but hasnt turned in a homework assignment in 3 weeks... that kid needs to be punished IMHO. I believe we as society started getting soft when we started this no negative reinforcement crap. Heck, real life has negative reinforcement. Real life dont make me feel good when I screw up. Part of why I studied in school was bc I knew that if I didnt, my dad would whip my tail. A lot of kids today dont have that at home. I guess say all that to say this... there is no cookie cutter way. Find out why kid isnt passing and handle accordingly.