First Year Program Development, Growth, and Overall Success
“One of the most rewarding experiences in my role was being on-site and witnessing the direct impact of our coaches on the students’ lives. Our coaches were able to offer a listening ear, positive encouragement, constructive feedback, and ultimately grow alongside these students in many ways themselves.“
Sydney Smith, Manager of School Programs
This past year, I served as the After School Program Coordinator for High Performance Academy’s first school year as a community partner and enrichment provider for the After School Programs within Fresno Unified School District. This role provided me with the opportunity to blend my passion for service and sports into a role that equips emerging adults in the workforce and provides sports enrichment to local students through After School Programs. The 2024-25 school year was filled with unforeseen challenges, triumphs, and endless opportunities to learn, grow, and better serve my team.
My essential responsibility as the After School Program Coordinator was to oversee and ensure the daily operational success of our team and program. Success is viewed and determined in a variety of ways, but the few areas of success that I wanted to accomplish personally and with my team included areas of leadership and development, relationship building, and quality experiences for all – including but not limited to our staff, community partners, and students.
One of the most important functions and responsibilities of my role was leadership and development, and therefore by extension, people management. As the ASP Coordinator, my priority was to lead with an empathetic and understanding heart, ensuring my team felt seen, heard, and recognized for their continuous hard work. I think of myself as a lifelong learner which leads me to advocate and value continuous growth. I believe that providing additional resources, materials, and constructive criticism ensures that employees are equipped and suited for success in fulfilling their responsibilities. One way I offered these opportunities for continued learning is through Professional Development. These training events were hosted for our coaches so employees could grow in their knowledge, skills, and techniques while enhancing their ability to better coach and serve the students. We hosted these events every month or so, and each training day we focused on a variety of categories that would contribute to our coach’s growth and professional development. These topics included classroom management and engagement strategies, effective and creative coaching methodologies, professional communication, and relationship building techniques and skills.
Another category I wanted to pursue excellence in was relationship building, which I believe directly correlates with the team’s success in morale and connectedness. Relationships are crucial to a team’s success and their ability to deliver on their intended purpose. With a team of over 50 employees, building and maintaining relationships was of the upmost importance to ensure commitment and buy-in from our team to dedicate themselves to coaching students to be their best in all they do. Prioritizing relationships allowed me to build and retain relationships amongst our staff, which led me to be better suited when addressing and supporting our coaches’ needs and concerns. Additionally, my hope was to build relationships not only with our own staff, but with FUSD Coordinators who were on site, overseeing their school’s program. One of my fundamental beliefs is to provide the best service and experience possible in which all teams must come together to dedicate themselves to pursuing a collective goal. I saw tremendous growth within our team and our overall performance due to the unique relationship-building focus of our team as well as our on-site partners. The result of two teams seamlessly dedicating themselves to a collective goal allowed us to provide the best quality service to students in the After School Program.
Lastly, the final area in which I wanted to strive for success as part of my role was prioritizing the quality of the experience of our staff, partners, and most importantly students. Positive Impacts have a trickledown effect, people we directly interact with can and will reach others. With this in mind, I wanted to prioritize the positive experience of our staff so that we could ultimately provide a supportive experience for our community partners in which the students were directly impacted by the seamless teamwork and commitment to best serve them. I cannot emphasize the value of these efforts enough because we strive a holistic approach in providing best-in-class experiences in employment, partnerships, and coaching. As a former athlete, I have been molded and impacted by my coaches in a variety of different ways. My hope was for our team to acknowledge that opportunity to impact a student’s life every day. One of the most rewarding experiences in my role was being on-site and witnessing the direct impact of our coaches on the students’ lives. Our coaches were able to offer a listening ear, positive encouragement, constructive feedback, and ultimately grow alongside these students in many ways themselves. Seeing our coaches act on this opportunity brought me so much joy as I could see all the work that I was doing to equip and foster growth in our coaches, and all the work our coaches put into bettering themselves to coach the students, was paying off in creating a successful program for our students.
As I reflect on this past year, I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity I had to grow alongside my team and to bring a unique experience and service to our local communities. I am appreciative of this unique experience and opportunity to build a first-year program from the ground up, and I look forward to reaching even greater heights in the future. This is only the beginning, and I am excited to lead this team and program into pursuing excellence in all we do.
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