College Coaches and Teaching Civil Society Literacy

This is a book about a treasure hidden on college campuses across the United States. This treasure is the expertise that college coaches acquire as they do their life work in intercollegiate athletic competition. In their work, coaches routinely join to sustain relationships among parties who hold very different interests as they meet in scheduled athletic competition. This expertise is a treasure for General Education, because General Education entails preparing adults to live thoughtfully and with civility in the company of one another. This treasure is hidden, because coaches are customarily ineligible to teach in the academic program. The author shows that such exclusion is optional. He charts a pathway for bringing coaches “off the bench” and into General Education teaching. He presents plans with which college faculty and coaches can join to assemble texts for teaching learners about claiming places in something larger than career and familiar comfort. In the precise grammar of these texts, the author demonstrates that college coaches are positioned to contribute comprehensively to the advancement of General Education.