Carlos Perez, 15, always dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player. Inspired by his desire, he enrolled in UNO Soccer Academy, a high school on the South Side of Chicago.

 

He was very passionate about the game, but his grades were poor and his behavior was turning troublesome.

 

Perez started attending UNO Soccer Academy in 2013, when the school opened in Gage Park – a working-class neighborhood that has a large Hispanic population.

 

Now a sophomore, Perez became interested in pursuing other vocations alongside his soccer training.

 

“I would like to be a soccer player, but that’s really hard to get into, so I’m also interested in becoming a journalist or an architect,” he said. “And I think this school is going to help me.”

 

By virtue of his enthusiasm for soccer, and the opportunity to study in an institution that was built around the sport, Perez is one of many students that found motivation through theme-based education.

 

UNO Soccer Academy builds its curriculum around a specific discipline, with the goal of having this particular field acting as the medium towards better education. Although this model is typical of magnet schools, there are now charter schools that are implementing this teaching method.

 

“This idea of themed high school education is starting to pop up more,” said John Loehr, director of curriculum & assessment of UNO Soccer Academy. “It keeps the students engaged and provides focus and continuity.”

 

Disney Elementary Magnet School, offers arts and technology integrated education since 1973. It was the first school of this kind in Chicago, but now it is one of 41 magnet schools in the city, according to CPS data.

 

Located in Mount Greenwood, a neighborhood on the South Side of the city, Chicago High School for the Agricultural Sciences is a public school that opened in 1985 on what once was the last working farm in the city.

 

The hallways in “Chicago Ag” – as the school is also known – smell like zucchini bread. The reason is that the food science class is studying the chemical process behind baking. The ingredients consist, mostly, in the products grown by the agriculture class.

 

Students can cultivate vegetables all year round thank to the greenhouses that the mechanics class builds and maintains. After the harvest, the finance class prices the products and sells them. When there is a surplus, the food science class closes the cycle by using the residuals for educational purposes.

 

“Our focus is to learn by doing,” said William Hook, principal of the school. “That’s the key; hands-on application every day. That’s what I’m afraid is missing in a lot of education areas. Students don’t  know why they’re doing what they’re doing, but our students are doers.”

 

Chicago Ag is one of seven agriculture schools in the country. Its 78-acre campus is a true land-lab that offers urban students the opportunity to pick between different pathways: horticulture, agriculture mechanics, agriculture education, food science, and animal science.

 

Jessica Cegielski, 16, choose to follow the horticulture track, and hopes to have some valuable experience by the time she graduates.

 

“My dream is to go to grow grapes and make wine in California,” she said. And now, thank to the courses she takes at Chicago Ag, she’s getting hands-on experience towards a future career in viniculture – the science of producing grapes for wine.

 

Her horticulture classmate, Sean Tobin, 16, wants to go to college for crop science and become a farmer.

 

“While other students are sitting in a classroom, I am in the field, and I actually learn about the things I’m interested in,” Tobin said.

 

Chicago High School for the Agricultural Sciences is one of the top performing public schools in the area. In 2012, Chicago Magazine ranked it 13th best high school in the city. It has a graduation rate of 93 percent, and 87 percent of its students go to college, according to the principal.

 

It is not surprising, therefore, that more schools are incorporating similar components into their instruction. UNO Rogers Park, for example, is now integrating a fine arts focus throughout its curriculum.

 

After observing the rapid growth of the soccer academy, UNO Rogers Park – located in the former St. Scholastica Academy campus, on Ridge Boulevard – decided to take the same approach and use art as a connecting educational element.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like with sports and agriculture, education can be imparted through any specific topic. There are schools in Chicago that offer programs with strong emphasis in languages, science, or math. Institutions like Chicago Ag and the UNO Soccer Academy have joined the tendency for what might become a popular approach to education in the future.

 

At the soccer academy, even test day is seen through the eyes of the school’s theme.

 

“Testing time is like a game, when you really have to excel in your skills to be able to demonstrate how hard you’ve worked,” said Angelina Bua, UNO, Soccer’s school director. “Our goal is not only to have our students get to college, but also to have them graduate from college.”

 

Erdnic Cohantimur, sports science teacher and soccer coach, thinks that besides the benefits of being active, by playing a team sport, students can learn values like sportsmanship and respect. In this manner, the theme acts as a helping hand to emphasize concepts that the students can take into their professional lives and beyond.

 

“Getting that mindset around the students, and making them believe that working together, will make them more successful, both individually and as a group, is how we want to influence them,” he said. “There will be many ways that you have to work with other people in your life. So the way you do it will have an impact in your community.”

 

Over the past two years, Cohantimur has been sharing these ideas with student Carlos Pérez. Through several conversations and sports analogies, the coach hoped to positively influence the academic performance and behavior of his student.

 

After some months, he received a letter from Pérez. “He wrote me: ‘Mr. C., I have realized that I have to be better towards other people, so I’m changing my attitude,’” Cohantimur said. 

 

Because his grades and behavior improved, Perez is now able to form part of the school’s soccer team, he is the goalkeeper.

 

The theme of soccer has been a major input for him to become involved in school activities and, at the same time, take hold of his own education at an early age.

 

“Themed education can provide additional inspiration and it can represent a shift in the way students see school,” Cohantimour said. “I always tell them, if you change your attitude towards school, good grades will be just the product. They will come on their own”

 

 

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