Leadership Matters Summer 2015

and places where districts are innovating and finding ways for kids to have remarkable opportunities. I also think the stress that public education is under generally in this country is also present here in Illinois.” Those stressors, Smith said, include the lack of financial resources, demands on classroom time, poverty, homelessness, transient populations and unfunded mandates. “The needs are not getting fewer, they’re getting greater and the resources to meet those needs have been constrained. So how do you actually get the right kind of service and get the right kind of attention to the whole child, the social emotional learning conditions that are necessary for kids to feel connected? I’m a very, very big proponent of community schools creating the conditions that make kids feel like they belong. In fact, in Oakland we organized ourselves in ways to coordinate, align and leverage the public, private and philanthropic assets kind of as the lead agency for children in the community. We’ve got to be much more aggressive in our public school systems about doing that work. “And I think increasingly as those needs are so broad it’s getting clearer that teachers’ relationships with kids and families is at the heart of a great school. We have to make sure that teachers have the content and emotional support they need and the kind of professional culture that’s essential. I think in the context of a community, schools are where that stuff happens best.” Smith’s short-term goals for the coming school year include continuing the conversation about overhauling the current school funding formula that last was changed in 1997. “A goal would be that we make progress and have a collective conversation so that it’s no longer a “The needs are not getting fewer, they’re getting greater and the resources to meet those needs have been constrained. So how do you actually get the right kind of service and get the right kind of attention to the whole child, the social emotional learning conditions that are necessary for kids to feel connected? I’m a very, very big proponent of community schools creating the conditions that make kids feel like they belong...I think in the context of a community, schools are where that stuff happens best.”

He returned to the campus at Berkeley to try and figure out a new path. Behind the scenes during his playing days at Cal, Smith had been tutoring teammates who were struggling in English classes. The hulking 6-foot-3, 280-pound lineman had graduated El Dorado High School as English Student of the Year and chose English as his undergraduate major. He credits the head of Cal’s Athletic Studies Center, Jo Baker, for helping steer him toward becoming an educator. “She was really a thoughtful and wonderful person who listened to the things that were on my mind,” said Smith, who in the magazine article recalled Baker saying to him: “Tony, remember how you helped your teammates? I don’t know why you don’t see this: You’re an educator.” Smith ended up teaming with Derek Van Rheenen, a former pro soccer player who now is coordinator of Cal’s Cultural Studies of Sport in Education program, to develop a course titled “Introduction to Sport and Society.” Smith taught the class that became the basis of his dissertation looking at the role that race, class, gender and sexual orientation had on sports participation and academic achievement, and how those factors produce different types of experiences. While he was working on his Ph.D. Smith started working for the Bay Area Coalition of Equitable Schools. “It was one of those things where it was more about what felt right and what felt connected – teaching and coaching and being in support of kids,” Smith said. “Some places were really amazing and others were less so. Just what made the difference and why some places were so good, I was curious about that. “I think there are remarkable stories of success

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