Colleen Banks Touts Importance of Playing Games
and Learning Lessons

1989 College of Wooster graduate shares passion for fun and education with her students

Playing games has always come naturally for Colleen Banks.

A 1989 College of Wooster graduate, Banks has been kicking, throwing, passing, shooting, or hitting one type of ball or another for as long as she can remember. In college, she was a member of the varsity soccer, basketball, and softball teams, but at 5’1” and just over 100 lbs., she realized there was not much of a future in organized sports.

So, like most Wooster students, she concentrated on her studies, and graduated with a degree in psychology while earning a certificate in education.

“My interest has always been in teaching kindergartners and first graders and in coaching middle school and high school students,” she says. “I have always loved the way young kids look at life and learning. I believe that they are our future and that we need to teach them and train them to become respectful, intelligent, and compassionate.

While at Wooster, Banks learned a lot about educating young people through her role as an assistant at the College’s nursery school. Just before the beginning of her senior year, she was invited to join the staff, and she wound up staying for two more years. During that same time, she also served as a coach for soccer and softball at Wooster High School.

She then moved to Texas, where she took a position at The John Cooper School, teaching kindergarten during the day and then coaching high school girls’ basketball and softball and boys’ soccer during the afternoon and evening. After eight years there, she headed west to Nevada, where she joined the staff at The Alexander Dawson School. At both schools, she was recognized for excellence by being named Teacher of the Year.

Banks credits Wooster for much of her academic and athletic success. “Wooster gave me an opportunity to work with young children in the classroom and still play competitive sports the entire time I was there,” she says. “It was a great experience for me.”

Today, she continues to rely on her Wooster education in a very tangible way. “I did my I.S. (Wooster’s nationally acclaimed Independent Study project, which matches a student with a faculty member in a yearlong research project that culminates with a graduate-level thesis) on children with summer birthdays, and whether they should go to school or wait a year,” she says. “I pull it out and refer to it just about every year when I talk to parents who have children with summer birthdays and are trying to determine when to send them to school.

 “It’s an important decision because it will affect them for the rest of their lives,” adds Banks. “Being the oldest or the youngest in a class definitely makes a difference.”

In recalling those who influenced her during her four years at Wooster, Banks says that Gordon Collins (emeritus professor of psychology) had a huge impact. “He always stressed the importance of taking what you learn in the classroom, applying it to the real world, and most importantly, finding a way to make a difference in young people’s lives,” she says. “The fact that Dr. Collins not only talked about, but also followed that philosophy in his own life made quite an impression on me.”

Now it is Banks who delivers those types of messages to impressionable young students. But that’s not the only way she interacts with them. After school, she coaches a variety of sports, including boys and girls’ basketball, softball, soccer, and her favorite, boys’ flag football. Banks’ Bears have won two of the last three “Super Bowls” in the Red Rock Athletic Conference.

At recess, you can find her on the playground, or organizing games on the football and baseball fields with first and second graders. This past spring, she was throwing the football with a group of students when one of the mothers took notice of her tight spirals and encouraged her to tryout for the Las Vegas Showgirlz of the Women’s Professional Football League, where that mother had been the team’s leading receiver the year before.

Never one to turn down an invitation to play a game, Banks tried out and made the team. This past season, she was a back-up quarterback, but she did see action and even threw the Showgirlz’s first touchdown pass of the year in a victory over the New Mexico Burn — one of two triumphs in a seven-game season. It wasn’t all glory, though, for the 40-year-old rookie. She was sacked by linemen twice her size, and she was “covered with bruises from head-to-toe,” but it was an experience she will never forget.

Banks’ students made it even more memorable by coming to the games wearing face paint and t-shirts that read, “Put in Miss Banks.” Not only did the kids have fun, but they also learned some important lessons about life. For example, at the end of the season, Banks decided to trade in her helmet for a clipboard and join the coaching staff next year, thus demonstrating to her students that discretion is, indeed, the better part of valor.