Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

I am currently a physical education teacher, boys' basketball coach, and girls' basketball coach at Park East High School in East Harlem, New York. Park East is a small high school in Manhattan, that serves grades 9-12. We have about 375 students in our school. With such a small number of a student body, it is very difficult to recruit a lot of students to participate in school athletics and extracurricular activities. In addition to a small student body, we also are not equipped with a large amount of resources and facilities. We have a small and outdated gymnasium. Because of the structure and outdated equipment, we are unable to host our own home games. Last season we had to travel to all games at the opposing teams, gyms. The backboards are wood and extremely old. I have devoted a lot of time to try to build and establish a strong, competitive athletic program at the school and have made some progress over the past two years. The girls' team went from an 0-9 record in our first season to an 8-3 record this past season. The boys were a club team this past season and are looking forward to joining the league next season. Each and every one of the players devoted all their time to the program even with the many constraints we had. The fact that we could only have practice until 6 pm forced the boys to come to school at 7 am 3-4 days a week in order to practice. The fact that we are such a small school in NYC and do not attract many athletes to our school due to our lack of facilities, this upgrade would really push us in the right direction to our goal of a strong athletic program. The upgrade would not only be utilized by the basketball teams, I also organized an after-school basketball program where about 45 students (boys and girls) played about 2-3 times a week and look to extend it to a local high school in our area. Not too mention all of the students that would use the resources during physical education class. I feel that the more attractive and modern equipment that we have, the students motivation will increase. Having two glass backboards would possibly allow us to host our own games next season. It would also be a great teaching aid in the fact that I had to tape a basketball square on our old backboards in order to help out the players. It would be a huge help for us in many different aspects. The biggest impact it would have on the students would not be how many wins we might get if we have good equipment or how many players try out, but the fact that the students would know that there are people that care and perform generous, caring acts for them. I have had the opportunity to see many of the kids' faces when they felt special and something nice has been done for them. There is no better thing to witness than that. So we are asking for two glass backboards for our gymnasium. We your help you can be responsible for the foundation of an up and coming athletic program and put about 375 smiles on young students' faces who do not find a lot of things to smile about. Thanks you for your consideration.