Raheim Smith
Raheim Smith is an American educator, U.S. Army veteran, and high-school football coach. After serving as a cannon crewmember in the 10th Mountain Division and the National Guard, Smith studied political science at Arizona State University (ASU). Through Teach For America he began teaching in New York City’s District 79—particularly at Passages Academy, a school that serves students who are awaiting trial or adjudicated in juvenile detention—with a noted emphasis on structure, accountability and real-world learning.[1][2] In 2025 he joined the football staff at Riverhead High School on Long Island, taking over as junior-varsity head coach after prior experience coaching at Rocky Point and Farmingdale.[3]
Raheim Smith | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Amityville, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Arizona State University (B.A., political science)[1] |
| Occupation(s) | Educator; high school football coach; writer |
| Years active | 2010s–present |
| Employer(s) | New York City Department of Education (former); Riverhead Central School District (from 2025, football) |
| Known for | Teaching justice-involved youth in New York City; coaching high school football on Long Island |
| Website | https://roovet.com/articles/Raheim_Smith |
Smith has been profiled for his work at the intersection of education and youth justice, including coverage highlighting his transition from military service to the classroom.[1][4][5] He has also published motivational writing, including the 2025 book I Push Myself and the e-book Warrior GRIT: The Path to Unbreakable Resilience and Personal Power.[6][7]
Early life and education
Publicly available accounts describe Smith’s childhood in New York as marked by housing instability and periods of homelessness. At age 17, he enlisted in the United States Army to support his family and create a route to higher education.[1] Smith trained as a cannon crewmember and served with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York. He has described the experience as sharpening his discipline, sense of service and leadership.[1] A contemporaneous Teach For America legislative report identifies him as “a former cannon crewmember of the 10th Mountain Division,” underscoring his veteran status in the program’s recruitment of military alumni.[5]
Following active duty, Smith continued in the National Guard while beginning college, eventually enrolling at Arizona State University.[1] At ASU he majored in political science and became involved in campus and community volunteer efforts. He has said that ASU’s “New American University” mission and emphasis on innovation drew him to the institution and fostered a desire to serve in education.[1]
Military service
Smith’s Army service is central to how he frames his later work in schools. He trained as a field artillery cannon crewmember and was stationed with the 10th Mountain Division—one of the Army’s most heavily deployed units—experiences he credits with instilling mission focus, teamwork, and accountability.[1] A 2013 Teach For America report, citing a New York Post article about veteran teachers, quotes Smith on the continuity between military and classroom leadership: students “look to me for structure and accountability.… I’m a military man. When I set out on a mission, I finish it.”[5]
Teach For America and District 79
In 2013 Smith joined Teach For America (TFA) and was placed in New York City’s District 79, a cluster of alternative programs that educate students who are disengaged from traditional schools or involved with the justice system.[1] Within District 79, Smith taught mathematics, emphasizing connections to everyday finance and decision-making to help students reengage with the subject. In an ASU News profile, he explained how he contextualized exponents and algebra using topics like mortgages and credit scores to show practical relevance and build confidence.[1]
Multiple Teach For America publications and profiles have associated Smith with Passages Academy, a network of schools that serve youth in secure and non-secure settings in New York City. One Day magazine’s 2016 feature on the “Prison-to-School Pipeline” lists Smith as a special education teacher in Brooklyn serving adolescents awaiting trial or already sentenced to detention, situating his work in a broader movement to replace exclusionary discipline with reengagement and supports.[2]
The school-to-prison pipeline—defined by education researchers as the set of policies and practices that disproportionately push marginalized youth from classrooms into carceral systems—forms the context for Smith’s classroom work.[8] Advocates and practitioners—including the educators profiled alongside Smith—have advanced alternatives such as trauma-responsive practice, restorative approaches, and instructional accommodations for students with disabilities, all aimed at boosting re-enrollment, persistence, and graduation among justice-involved youth.[9]
Teaching approach and classroom practice
Reporting on Smith’s District 79 classroom characterizes his approach as blending military-informed leadership with a coaching mindset, emphasizing discipline, clear routines, and incremental skill-building.[1] In interviews, he has framed each day’s lesson as a “mission,” an idea that resonated with students who have often experienced school as a site of exclusion. The immediate feedback loops of mathematics—seeing progress from one assessment to the next—figured prominently in his accounts of student growth, including examples of learners moving from failing marks to mastery through daily practice.[1]
A Teach For America North Carolina report (which highlighted TFA’s veteran recruitment nationally) quotes Smith on the “structure and accountability” his students expect from him, reflecting a consistent theme in veteran-to-teacher narratives documented by the organization.[5] In One Day magazine’s feature on the prison-to-school pipeline, Smith’s role is situated among alumni working on policy, disability accommodations, and juvenile justice education—suggesting that his classroom practice aligned with a multi-tiered reform landscape.[2]
High school football coaching
Beyond the classroom, Smith has built a parallel career coaching high school football on Long Island. In 2025 the Riverhead News-Review reported that Riverhead High School hired a new varsity head coach, Don Nelson, who appointed Smith to lead the Blue Waves’ junior-varsity program. The report also noted that Smith had prior coaching experience at Rocky Point and Farmingdale, two Suffolk and Nassau County programs, respectively.[3]
At Riverhead, the JV head coach is tasked with player development, instilling core systems that match the varsity scheme, and increasing program numbers—all focal points in the Riverhead staff’s early-season plans after a 1–7 campaign the previous year.[3] The JV role also aligns with Smith’s educational background: JV coaches frequently emphasize teaching fundamentals, differentiating instruction for underclassmen, and creating a culture where academic eligibility and time management are part of the program’s expectations.
Although most public coverage of Riverhead’s 2025 rebuild centered on the new varsity helm, the staff reorganization placed Smith in a pivotal developmental lane: recruiting and retaining freshmen and sophomores, teaching position-specific technique, and preparing athletes to transition to varsity roles. Programmatically, this is often the difference between sustainable improvement and one-year flashes of competitiveness at the varsity level.
Previous coaching stops
The News-Review identified Rocky Point and Farmingdale as Smith’s prior coaching assignments.[3] Rocky Point competes in Suffolk County’s Section XI, while Farmingdale is a Nassau County power with deep football traditions; both environments emphasize multi-sport participation and community engagement, elements that mirror Smith’s educator-coach identity. Public details on his exact titles and seasons at those schools are limited to the News-Review report; however, the combination of Suffolk and Nassau experience is notable in a region where conference structures, travel, and rivalries shape coaching contexts.
Writing and public speaking
In addition to teaching and coaching, Smith has authored motivational works. I Push Myself (2025) is presented as a first-person account of pushing through adversity, co-credited with Andrew Frothingham; the book’s retail listing identifies the hardcover as 109 pages with ISBN 979-8282302226.[6] In 2025 he also released the e-book Warrior GRIT: The Path to Unbreakable Resilience and Personal Power, framed as a guide to cultivating mental toughness and confidence in the face of setbacks.[7]
While published details vary across retailer listings, the thematic through-line of Smith’s writing—resilience, service, and a “coach’s” mindset carried into civilian life—echoes the narrative seen in earlier media profiles of his transition from the Army to the classroom. Those profiles, including an ASU News feature and a New York Post piece on veteran teachers, emphasize how experiences of instability in youth, followed by military discipline and postsecondary study, formed the bedrock of his educator identity.[1][4][5]
Smith has also been active on social media platforms (including X/Twitter and Facebook) where he shares short reflections on education, leadership, and community work, and maintains an author page on Amazon for updates about his books and projects.[10][11][12]
Views and philosophy
Across interviews and posts, Smith stresses that students respond to consistency, clarity, and a sense that adults will not give up on them. He advocates for instruction tied to concrete tasks—particularly in mathematics—so that learners can “see the why” behind abstract procedures and recognize quick wins that build confidence.[1] His descriptions of lesson planning and classroom management borrow language from the military (missions, accountability, discipline) but are framed in support of student agency rather than control for its own sake.
On juvenile justice education, Smith’s inclusion in Teach For America’s “Prison-to-School Pipeline” feature associates his work with a national conversation about reducing exclusionary discipline, meeting the needs of students with disabilities, and coordinating school re-entry supports.[2] Scholars have emphasized the compounded risk for juvenile-justice-involved youth who have disabilities, underlining the importance of accommodations and multi-tiered supports—areas that align with how alternative education teachers like Smith approach the work.[13]
Recognition and media coverage
Smith’s story—Army veteran to alternative-education teacher—has been cited by both university and media outlets. ASU News profiled his path in 2013, detailing his enlistment at 17, transition to ASU, and Teach For America placement at District 79.[1] The New York Post article “On education’s front lines” included him among veteran educators working with high-need students in New York City,[4] a piece subsequently referenced in Teach For America’s 2013 legislative reporting.[5]
Legacy and impact
Because much of Smith’s work has unfolded in classrooms and on practice fields rather than on high-visibility stages, assessments of his influence come primarily through program-level narratives: the District 79 emphasis on reengagement; Passages Academy’s mission of educating youth in or returning from confinement; and Riverhead’s push to rebuild a football culture after a difficult season.[2][3] His career illustrates a trajectory increasingly visible in American public service—military veterans transitioning into teaching and coaching roles that draw on the strengths of both worlds. In this sense, Smith’s “mission-first” language captures a continuity of service that resonates with students and athletes in need of steady adult leadership.
Selected works
I Push Myself (Independently published, 2025), ISBN 979-8282302226.[6]
Warrior GRIT: The Path to Unbreakable Resilience and Personal Power (e-book), 2025.[7]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 (October 24, 2013). "Alum finds passion joining Teach For America after military". ASU News. accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 (October 12, 2016). "The Prison-to-School Pipeline". One Day (Teach For America). accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 (August 1, 2025). "New coach, new goals for Riverhead H.S. football". Riverhead News-Review. accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Amos, Candace. (November 7, 2013). "On education’s front lines". New York Post. accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 (December 20, 2013). "Teach For America North Carolina – Second Quarter Legislative Report". accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Smith, Raheim “Wheels”. (June 4, 2025). "I Push Myself". accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Warrior GRIT: The Path to Unbreakable Resilience and Personal Power". Amazon. accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ Kim, Brian K. E., Trout, Alex E., and Hester, Randal. (2021). "The School-to-Prison Pipeline for Probation Youth with Disabilities". Children and Youth Services Review. vol. 128. p. 106182. accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ (August 19, 2015). "Tracing the school-to-prison pipeline". K-12 Dive. accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ "@raheimsmith". X (Twitter). accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ "Raheim Smith". Facebook. accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ "Raheim Smith – Author Page". Amazon. accessed August 14, 2025.
- ↑ Kim, Brian K. E., Trout, Alex E., and Hester, Randal. (2021). "The School-to-Prison Pipeline for Probation Youth with Disabilities". Children and Youth Services Review. vol. 128. p. 106182. accessed August 14, 2025.