The Steve Simoes Story: Recent Episodes
Charles Snyder
This is a series of dialogues between my high school baseball coach and long time mentor from afar, Steve Simoes. Coach Simoes earned the trust and respect of every player on his team by always saying what might be easier not to and observing things that flew over others' heads. When I started teaching, he gave me advice that I still hold near and dear to me, which was teach to your own personality and have as many one on one conversations as you can.
We talk a lot about mental health and how we respond to a classroom situation where a student has been missing due to mental health. We also talk about power and authority and what is meant by the word presence.
We talk about adapting and how a coach does that as the season goes on and also how that looks as teachers.
We talk about late 90's Hiller baseball and how experiences as outsiders shaped our identity. His experience as a first generation college student. Eliminating the word "They" from his teaching.
Coach Simoes talks to me about who he was before he came to Hopkinton to coach and teach. We also talk about some of the early years of his coaching.