Austin Garrett: Making a positive impact on students in the classroom and on the field

How did you become interested in education?

If you told me back in high school that I was going to be a teacher, I would think you’re crazy. It was toward my senior year and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do after high school. I played football and was looking at trying to go long snap somewhere.

I felt a call to ministry, maybe learn to become a pastor or something like that. I even thought about getting into marketing in the business world. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. My mom, Jennifer Garrett, who works in Events Services at AU—she’s a great woman and loves the Lord. She said, “Austin, I think you should try education. What do you think about that?” I looked into it and ended up taking teacher cadet class at T.L. Hanna High School.

I felt the call to ministry was for me to impact and pour into high school students. I may not always be able to share the gospel, but I can set the example of Christ to them. At least… point them in the direction that Jesus lays out for us to follow, whether they choose to believe it or not.

How did you come to Anderson University?

I fell in love with teaching. It came down to what school I wanted to choose. I ended up getting a Teaching Fellows scholarship to Anderson University. Anderson was that school that was always in my back yard. I didn’t necessarily want to go to Anderson in the first place, but all the doors opening and shutting kind of pointed me towards Anderson. The Teaching Fellows scholarship was a big help for sure.

When I set foot on campus for orientation—Base Camp is what they call it now—I fell in love with Anderson and quickly realized that it was the school for me.

I got involved in the education department there. What got me to where I am now—teaching—is when I was at Anderson, we had some coaching changes at my high school, T.L. Hanna, for football. One of the coaches went to McCants Middle School to coach there and he reached out to me, knowing that I was going to be at Anderson and knowing that I was doing education. He reached out and asked me to help him out while I was in college—that opened the door for me to get into coaching. All four years while I was a student at Anderson, I was able to coach football, and it got me in the door of seeing that side of education. I would like to be a coach and a teacher. Practicing coaching while I take my education classes was really nice. Eventually I was called up to help at the high school, which then opened the door for me to get a job at T.L. Hanna High School once I graduated from Anderson.

I got on the football staff there and once a teaching position opened up, it was a foot in the door to land a job there.

This is my seventh year in education and my tenth year of coaching. Since graduating in 2018 with my bachelor’s, I went back to Anderson and got my Master’s in Administration in 2021.

I saw the Lord’s hand in orchestrating all the steps of just simply going to Anderson in the first place for my education and then from there, getting plugged into coaching, which led me to be able to get a job and to be where I’m at today. The Lord’s sovereignty played a big part in that, which I’m very grateful for.

What gives you a feeling of accomplishment as a coach and a teacher?

I’ll be honest with you—teaching is hard. Being a coach, too. You’ve got some long days. There are some days where I’ll be going in before 7 o’clock and on a practice day I’m not getting home until after 7 o’clock. If it’s a game day, I’m not getting home until about 1 o’clock in the morning from doing laundry or whatever else. It does weigh you down a little bit.

What motivates me and gets me going is to remember what God has called me to with teaching. There are a lot of days I want to quit and say “I’m done with this. Let’s see what’s available,” but the Lord has placed me in these areas for a reason and what He’s called me into, He’s going to sustain me in, and He’s going to push me to continue on. Knowing that calling from the Lord is what gets me up to go and take another crack at it.

There have been times where I’d say “Lord, I don’t know if this is where I want to be anymore,” and I asked Him for reassurance. He’s always come through and He has always shown me; it may be through a conversation with a student; it can be about history; it can be about their life and hearing about what’s going on in their life and being able to help them to know things; maybe getting to see a player in practice progress.

I think it’s just knowing the weight of what I do in teaching and how it’s really impacted a lot of lives and knowing that it’s the responsibility the Lord has placed on me and that I’m not left alone to get it done. The Lord wants to partner with me in this ministry. He is waiting on me to join Him in that partnership. He excites me to get out there and be with those kids, to be at practice, and He’s excited for the good things He has in store that He wants me to experience with them through that ministry, if that makes sense.

What gets me going is that call from the Lord. The Lord’s reward day in and day out definitely outweighs the really tough days.

What are some favorite memories of your years as an Anderson University student?

Definitely my freshman year living in the Village basement—that was a really fun time. You have 30 rooms on one floor... You’re all bonding together trying to figure this whole college thing out.

I was pretty involved with FCA when I was at Anderson. We’d have our own worship team, we’d have our own production, and we’d have speakers come in. Honestly for a bunch of college kids it was impressive what we were able to do. It was pretty much student led. We were able to have classmates come to the Lord through some of our Monday night gatherings. We were able to put on some cool events.

Doing that taught me a lot about ministry and what that looked like—being able to serve others and also delivering the gospel to others. My role with FCA was as the Monday night coordinator. I helped plan our services and messages and coordinate speakers and coordinate with the worship team. I think it prepared me for roles I have now, working at church with our kids’ ministry. Also, I’m a teacher sponsor for a Christian group at T.L. Hanna called YCI. It’s a student-led thing where they put on a Bible study, and I help facilitate. I get to share a lot of the wisdom I learned from doing it at Anderson through FCA.

A pretty big part of my Anderson experience was being part of FCA—it was where I found my greatest community. A lot of my best friends from college were in that group as well. People like Alex Kunar, Dakota Milner, Jack Martin, Jake Holland, Tanner Woody, Kyle Booth and others really played a big part in making my AU experience one of the best. I did some BCM my freshman year. Because of my schedule of coaching—we had games on Thursday nights—and I couldn’t make it to the Thursday night gatherings. BCM was awesome, too. I got to meet Nate Calvert, and Will Bray led that. I lived with them my senior year—they were great guys to be roommates with.

Another thing I absolutely loved and encourage any AU student to go do is the mission trips that AU puts on. I went on four different mission trips. I went on two trips to Panama City for Beach Reach. Beach Reach was probably one of my favorite mission trips I had been on. If I could go back and help out with that, I definitely would. I went to Boston and Seattle. We helped partner with North American Mission Board at some of those churches and church plants. It was cool to go with people we knew but also people we didn’t know and make some new friendships.

I served in The Office of Admission and also worked summer staff about every year. I helped out with facilities and whatever needed to be done. I really did enjoy giving tours and talking to prospective students and their families. It was cool to see a lot of students who I talked to that were juniors and seniors in high school and watching them go through there the next few years, and then they actually came to Anderson.

In summer staff we got to partner with Clayton King Ministries for Crossroads. That was a whole lot of fun working with them. I go to Newspring Church. I’ve been going there ever since I was in the second grade.

What advice would you give someone wanting to coach and teach in a school?

It definitely is a calling. Just be prepared to do the work. Once you get your feet beneath you, it will work out a little easier for you. The biggest key to it all is time management. That’s something I struggled with starting out—trying to balance time management between grading, getting lessons ready but also getting stuff ready for practice. You spend some long nights like that, but it does get easier.

For someone who is a believer who’s looking to getting into teaching and coaching, it’s probably one of the best opportunities you have for ministry. You’re out there with students and players all day. You have some you’ve got in class and on the field and you get to build some really solid relationships with them and you have as a door for you to show the love of Jesus. You may not be able to talk to them about the gospel but you can be that positive influence those students may not have. It’s fun and definitely rewarding, but it is a grind. You’ve got to be ready for that.

Anything else?

I think overall Anderson is a great school. I’m thankful the Lord brought me to Anderson and I think it helped shape me for my education career. I learned a whole lot from the professors and my peers there about all the fundamentals of being a teacher. The way that AU prepared me to be a teacher set me apart from some other people I know who went to some other schools. All of the lesson plans, all the work samples and all the things they made us do were definitely worth it in the end, and I’m really thankful I went through that.