Teacher and coach Cathy Coffman sees parallels between the facets of her job. “It’s about developing passion and building confidence in young people,” she said. Photo: Jackson Smith
Doing the math
Teaching plus coaching adds up to a perfect fit for Cathy Coffman
On the Monday following prom, Cathy Coffman’s afternoon calculus class is nearly devoid of seniors. “Oh my goodness,” she shouts as the last few students straggle in before the bell rings. “You’re here! On senior skip day!” And then she gets to work.
“Today we’re going to look at volume. You’ve got a nine out of 10 chance that there will be a volume question on the AP exam in three weeks,” Coffman says. “I brought in some visuals,” she adds, pulling a pineapple from a sack and launching into a demonstration of another common application of the definite integral: finding the volume of solids of revolution. Five minutes in and I’m lost, so I inventory the UVA alumna’s Albemarle High School classroom and learn a lot about the 51-year-old, a Northern Virginia native who’s taught hard math to teenagers for nearly three decades.
Large sheets of paper, covered with the names of this year’s seniors and the colleges where they’ve been accepted, hang on one wall. A bulletin board is filled with photos of young runners and rowers, members of some of the cross-country and crew teams Coffman’s coached over the years. A black ‘2,’ also pinned to the bulletin board, was worn by Coffman when she and her rowing partner took second place at Boston’s Head of the Charles regatta in 2008. Nine borrowed ergs (indoor rowing machines) stand on their sides in the back of the classroom, and a copy of The Little Engine That Could is propped on a bookshelf.
Two hours later, Coffman is at the helm of a small, motorized boat. Gone is the summery black skirt, pink T-shirt, white sandals, and stylishly knotted scarf from earlier in the day. Coach Coffman has changed into jeans, tennis shoes, and a red jacket with a matching baseball cap. She clips a pair of shades over wire-rimmed glasses, grabs her stopwatch, loops a megaphone cord around her wrist, and heads down the Rivanna River after five boats that contain the AHS crew team, which she coaches for zero pay and with no budget.
Coffman met her engineer husband while rowing, and the pair tried to pass their passion for the sport on to their two college-aged children, but “it didn’t take,” she says with a shrug. “There were other sports they liked better.”
Lack of interest is nowhere to be found on this windy, April afternoon. “Sit ready, aaaaand row,” Coffman commands, and between glances at her stopwatch, she offers non-stop tips and encouragement to her team, which brought home last year’s Men’s Quad Virginia Scholastic Rowing Championship: “Stay long; straighten out; come out square; boys’ quad right to the water.” This is today’s second session—at 6:30am the ergs were dragged from Coach C’s classroom and lined up in the AHS math hallway, where the team’s initial workout commenced.
“Mrs. Coffman never settles for average effort, whether it’s in the classroom or on the water,” says Gabe Giacalone, an AHS senior who’s on the crew team and in one of Coffman’s calculus classes. “She’s tough…but what she’s doing is teaching you to push yourself. So when it comes time for a test or a race, not only are you smarter or faster, you also feel an empowering sense of confidence.”
“Coaching and teaching go together,” Coffman says. “In both academics and athletics, it’s about developing passion and building confidence in young people…challenging them to do something they have never done before, whether that means passing an SOL, scoring a perfect 5 on the AP test, or winning a big race.”—S.S.