At the end of each school year, Physical Education teacher Alison Adams changes every locker combination in the girl’s locker room. While many may think that Adams receives help with this task due to the mass amount of lockers, the responsibility is hers alone.
Coach Adams has been a Physical Education teacher at Campolindo since the late 90s to present and continues to be a living inspiration to the current 9th graders in her class.
With the retirement of Chris Walsh last year, Coach Adams added the yoga class to her teaching schedule in the 2023-2024 school year. Adams was excited to be working on something new, as she learns yoga poses and techniques along with her sophomore, junior, and senior students: “It’s a good learning experience. Working on yoga over the summer and trying to meet the needs of the students, especially in the flexibility and balance area to start the year.”
Being the only female physical education teacher at Campo had been putting stress on Adams as it adds more responsibilities that she has to combat on her own. Adams is in charge of locker room supervision, assigning lockers, helping students in the girls’ locker room, changing locker combinations for every locker in the girl’s locker room while also pre-assigning lockers during the summer, and making sure that everything runs smoothly. If the lockers don’t work, Adams will have to call for assistance to fix them before the school year starts. Every year, there have been at least half a dozen that need to be fixed.
Changing the locker combinations every year is something that she’s been having to do on her own time during summer break. However, although most thought this task would normally take her about 2 days up to a week, it only took Adams about a day to complete. This is something that Adams must do before the start of every new year so that when the time comes, all she needs to do is look up their name, and their locker number and combination will be ready to go.
While Coach Adams was happy that the lockers had been given a new coat of paint during the summer of 2023, she stated that she would’ve loved to see brand-new lockers in the locker room: “At some point, it’d be nice to have new lockers. Over the years, I believe all of our other schools in our district have had new lockers [possibly] from the parents club.”
As students can only peer in from the outside of her huge world, nobody knows the whole story of how Ms. Adams does it all. It can only be assumed that she’s working hard to make sure things get done right.
Venus Senanayake, a student in Adams’s 7th period, stated, “I think she’s doing a pretty good job. She definitely puts harder work into it like pilates, but I feel like it’s fun.”
Liam Chapman, a 9th grader in her PE class said, “It’s harder than it was at JM [Joaquin Moraga] but that was expected, I don’t feel that she’s doing a bad job.” Chapman appreciates how much work and effort Adams has put into each of her lessons as it challenges the class and encourages them to make more of an effort while also strengthening their connection and trust within each other.
