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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
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.”