By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

The “Coaches in the Classroom” feature is a weekly series that is designed to spotlight and celebrate coaches throughout Portage County, who spend their days in the classrooms and hallways leading today’s student-athletes to be tomorrow’s leaders.

Today’s spotlight is on Garfield High School girls basketball coach Aaron Gilbert, who is a middle school social studies and technology teacher at James A. Garfield High School.

• School district: James A. Garfield Local Schools.
• How long have you been employed at the district?: 18 years.
• Classes taught?: 7th grade Social Studies and 7th grade Technology. I have also taught 7th grade Science, Financial Literacy, 6th grade ELA, 6th grade Math, 6th grade Health and 6th grade Art.
• What made you want to become an educator?: I grew up with my dad being a high-school teacher, so I’ve always been around the school environment. I wanted to be a coach and back then, that was the path to coaching. I didn’t really know anything else growing up.
• What is the favorite part of your job?: My favorite part is when students come back to visit the classroom and talk about the lessons that we are doing and what they remember from that lesson.
• What have you earned about being an educator that you didn’t know before you started?: I’ve learned in my 25 years of teaching that there is a lot more that goes into being a teacher than just knowing the subject materials. It is being a counselor, a leader, a custodian, a mentor, a coach and many, many other things not taught to you in the college environment.
• Which teachers influenced you to go into education?: Many of my Social Studies teachers over the years are my reasons for getting into education, specifically Mr. Jim Kanable, who was my high school Government teacher.
• How do you apply some of your coaching to the classroom?: Good coaches are good teachers. They are able to not only get students to do the lessons, but to retain the material and learn it in a variety of ways. Coaches do the same thing. You have to find different ways for players to learn a play, just like you have to find different methods for students to learn the material for your lessons.
• How do you apply some of your classroom to your coaching?: In many instances in the classroom today, you have students with many different learning styles. In order to reach all of the students in your classroom, you need to design lessons that offer those learning opportunities to each student. Coaching works the same way. Coaches need to find different ways to teach their players what is expected of them both on the field and on the court. Some need film, some need the plays drawn up, some need to draw the plays themselves, others need to physically run through the play. Any and all of these methods are needed to get players to perform at the level required to be successful.
• What is the funniest thing that has ever happened to you in the classroom?: I teach middle-school students, so funny is a regular occurrence in the classroom. I am not sure there is one specific event that stands amongst the others.
• Mentors in your building who have helped you along the way?: John Bennett has been a mentor in this building for me for sure. The living legend of Portage County has plenty of stories and wisdom to share with us all. I think any possible teaching or coaching situation that has ever happened, John has experienced it throughout his career.