As a former high school and college athlete, Julie Kennedy, a 1993Georgetown University graduate, is involved these days in a part ofthe sports world she knew little about: money management, grantwriting, reseeding fields, locating vans for travel, pricing uniformsand scheduling games. In ways she never imagined, as well as measuredby success, she has become a pro at it.
Kennedy, on the faculty of the Marie H. Reed Learning Center inthe Adams-Morgan area of the capital, team-teaches first grade to 26children. Twenty of them speak Spanish as a first language. Nearlyall are in the school breakfast and lunch program. In her second yearat the elementary school, she is a member of Teach for America, theNew York-based program that recruits, trains and assigns teachers --mostly recent college graduates -- for urban and rural publicschools.
After getting a feel for Reed and the captivating multiculture ofthe neighborhood, Kennedy noticed that in addition to living withevery other impoverishment that plagues Washington and the nation'sinner-city schools, her kids had little outlet for after-school play.'They would often hang out on the streets with little to do,' shesays. 'So I thought, why not a soccer program? It was a logical movefor me. It's a sport I've played all my life.'
At this point, she could have agonized or organized. She chose thesecond, and now Reed, a well-regarded school, has a soccer team forits fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade girls. Kennedy is like the youngrabbi in Paddy Chayefsky's play, 'The Tenth Man,' who tells his newcongregation that the best way to develop the spiritual life of thecommunity is organize a sports team.
Last fall, 90 players guided by nine coaches at five publicelementary schools became the core of what Kennedy began: the D.C.Public Schools Girls Soccer League. She learned how to beg, borrowand deal. Covering ground like a mid-fielder, she went to such groupsas World Cup '94 -- the international soccer organization -- Howardand Georgetown universities, a local soccer league, a Methodistchurch, a sporting goods store and a supermarket for help. Theyresponded with services and donations, including five fields seededinto playing conditions complete with lines and goals, 70 soccerballs, medical checkups for players, use of a van and oranges fromSafeway for all practices and games.
The story of this resourceful and caring teacher might end hereexcept that the kind of idealism she practices could come to nothingif some political leaders have their negative way. 'I am totallyopposed to national service,' House Speaker Newt Gingrich hasannounced. 'It is coerced voluntarism. . . . It's gimmickry.'
Kennedy and 940 other members of Teach for America are under siegebecause they are part of AmeriCorps, the object of Gingrich's scorn.Teach for America, which has placed 2,800 elementary and high schoolteachers in underserved areas in the past five years -- and onlyafter being invited in -- received $2 million last year fromAmeriCorps.
Julie Kennedy and other teachers like her are the kind of publicemployees politicians ought to be showering with praise, notthreatening to wipe out. Kennedy is a fresh-thinking innovator whohas immersed herself in the lives of her first-graders and her soccerplayers. 'I love my students and I love my school,' she says.
In addition to teaching and coaching, Kennedy waitresses 25 hoursa week to pay back college loans. What little time is left goes towriting grant applications to expand her program. Why stop at fiveschools? she asks. Why limit the program only to girls? And why thinkonly of Washington, when dozens of cities with millions of grade-school kids could be reached?
This is gimmickry? Gingrich's charge amounts to slander.AmeriCorps is in only its first year -- crawling in its infancy, nowgetting to its feet -- and already the House AppropriationsCommittee, following the speaker's calls for a 'revolution,' hasplans to cut off its legs.
Is the Republican leadership's obsession to take down Bill Clintonso strong that 20,000 young people in AmeriCorps' 350 programs are tobe sacrificed too? And where do Julie Kennedy's kids, who are alsobeing tutored academically, go after school?
