Description: This is
a VOA Special English Education Report.
See text below
Text:
Ballou High School in Washington might not seem the
mostly likely school to have a lacrosse team. But
lacrosse has grown beyond the popular image of a
sport mainly for wealthy private schools. Ballou is
a public school in one of the poorest neighborhoods
in the city. In the past six years, more than forty
students have died violent deaths. Many were the
result of drug violence.
Ballou has just had its first year with a lacrosse
team. The team is for girls. They lost every game.
But their coach, Holly McGarvie, says this was also
the first time they ever played. She says the goal
was just to start "building a foundation that we can
build from and create a tradition of women's
lacrosse here at Ballou."
Lacrosse is a fast-moving sport, the modern version
of a game played by American Indians. Teams try to
make goals with a ball caught and thrown using a net
at the end of a stick.
School officials decided to make changes at Ballou
after less than sixty percent of the senior class
graduated in two thousand six. Since then the
graduation rate has improved by ten to fifteen
percent. Rahman Branch, the school principal, says
one change was to increase activities after the
school day. That included adding a girls lacrosse
team.
Mr. Branch says Holly McGarvie was a perfect match
for Ballou. She was on a national lacrosse team and
a star player at Princeton University. She was in
her first year of teaching. She wanted to take the
lessons she learned from sports and use them in
teaching biology.
Coach McGarvie says the first practices for the new
team were difficult. Some players got angry at one
another. She helped them learn to keep their mind on
the game. She remembers how excited the girls were
on their way home from their first game. They had
failed to score even one goal but, she says, "they
were already in the mindset of what can we do
better?"
Lacrosse player Tylashia Joyner says the sport has
helped her think more about her future. She says she
wants to play in college "because it will keep me in
shape and it will help me stay focused and want to
do something. Because if you want to play a sport,
you have to have your grades up."
For VOA Special English, I'm Alex Villarreal. You
can download MP3s of our programs and get podcasts
at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow us on
Twitter, Facebook and iTunes at VOA Learning
English.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
