Excellent Educator: DaVinci Academy's Mark Slechta
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- For a lot of students, it's their favorite subject in school -- Gym.
You'd think gym teachers have the best job right? Well it's not just fun and games for Mark Slechta, the Phy-Ed teacher at DaVinci Academy in Blaine.
Slechta challenges himself to connect with students outside the gym in a pretty impressive way, which is what make him this week's Excellent Educator.
Slechta has made it a goal to know every child in the school by name. He said he does this because he knows that every child needs to feel like they matter and the first step is knowing their name.
The school has more than 400 students.
"It gets harder as you get older," Slechta said.
Slechta also goes out of his way to make arrangements to help students who are struggling, especially with behavior. The school had one first grader who was having trouble staying seated on the bus in the morning. So Slechta made a deal with him that every day he got a thumbs-up from the bus driver, he could come in the gym and play with Slechta for five minutes before class started.
Since that deal, the school hasn't had another issue from this student on the bus.
Slechta is also an excellent coach. Five years ago, he started a basketball program with just 10 eighth-grade students. He took that team of students, some of whom had never played before, to first place in the state rec tournament.
Since then, the basketball program has grown exponentially and now consists of 420 students and seven basketball teams.
