Mentoring program expands with L.E.T.S. Play

by Shriya Karam '19

High School students use soccer to teach English to second-language learners. This article appears courtesy of The Peabody Press.
L.E.T.S. Play, led by junior Drew Dibble and five other members, is a new addition to USN’s mentoring program. Every Friday during E period and lunch, the six core members go to Whitsett Elementary school, teaching kids basic English by integrating new vocabulary and grammar into soccer drills and scrimmages.

The program was first developed by a USN alumna, Rebecca West, who started the program in Chile and brought it back to Nashville. “L.E.T.S.” (Language Education Through Sports) Play is brand new to the Nashville landscape, and the students are excited to continue to build more relationships.

“They’ve done individual visits to schools and clinics but haven’t done it in a partnership setting,” Dibble said.

Dibble started this program because he wanted to create an exciting mentoring program that integrated sports. 

“We teach them some of the basics of soccer and when they are practicing their vocab, they can pass the ball and practice the vocabulary involved in that and they’ll learn body parts in stretching before the scrimmage. It’s a lot of games, mainly just to make it more exciting,” Dibble said.

Throughout the year, Dibble hopes the program will expand and more students will join. 

“Right now, we have a small core group and we are starting small with just six of us with Coach Howe or Coach Scouten,” said Dibble. “That’s because we only have 10-12 children at Whitsett; we’re hoping that if it’s successful with a small group we would be able to expand and hopefully make it a more widespread and inclusive group in the future.”

The program has two sponsors, soccer coach Wendy Howe and boys’ athletic director Josh Scouten. Their primary roles include supervising the activities, interacting with the kids, and providing ideas about different soccer games the kids can play. 

Coach Howe said that most days have a lot of activities and learning packed in. 

“We’ll do a warm up. We’d say that we’re going to work on this word with the kids, maybe ‘pass,’ or ‘shoot the ball,’ and a lot of these kids won’t know what that means, so we’ll have to demonstrate that. We’ll have certain words for each lesson to go by and we’ll have a warm up that works on that word,” Howe said. “Then we’ll do a lesson where they’re sitting down and not playing, and then they’ll play. The first day we’re going to evaluate all the kids and test them. We’re going to put them in small groups and see what words they already know.”

Sophomore Maggie Robinson, one of the six members, said that the program has been successful in the past. 

“[Rebecca West] tried it out in Chile and had a 100% retention of the kids remembering the words at the end of it,” Robinson said. “They loved the activities because it’s a lot more fun than sitting in a classroom and learning it, and it got the kids to remember the words and grammar a lot better than they would have.”

Robinson agrees with Dibble in that she hopes that more students will join as the program continues to develop.

“Right now, [we’re] testing it out with a small group of students and [we’re going to] see how that goes, and if that group does well, then [we’ll] offer it to more people,” she says.

Robinson has enjoyed going so far, and especially looks forward to the exuberance of the kids.

“The best part is going to see all the kids because they’re super energetic and really excited to see you no matter what. It’s just really fun and always puts a smile on your face.”
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University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.