Learning to balance the ball

After graduating from Cedar Shoals in 2018, Ka’lah Paige returned to the jungle in August 2022 as head coach for the junior varsity volleyball team. Now, for the 2024-25 school year, she’s taking on greater roles as both the marketing teacher and head coach of the varsity volleyball team. 

Paige didn’t always want to be a teacher. At first she had her mind set on criminal justice, earning a bachelor’s degree in law enforcement from Albany State University. After graduating in December 2021, she joined Cedar’s staff as JV volleyball coach. She realized how lending a helping hand to people has been important to her.

“For me, life has been all about finding myself and continuing to grow. I’ve always worked with children. I’ve been a camp counselor, and I’ve done some internships where I supervised students while I was in college,” Paige said.

As a student at Cedar, Paige was a four-year member of the volleyball team. So, when Cedar’s coaching opportunity was available, she went for it.

“I really wanted to give back to my community and make sure that I poured into young people the same way that people poured into me when I was a student here. I believe that it was a great opportunity for me to continue to grow, but also so that I can be challenged as a professional,” Paige said.

Coaching volleyball is only one half of what has helped her. Teaching marketing has given her experience on balancing her students’ workloads and providing an environment where they can feel comfortable and express themselves through their work. 

“I came from a law enforcement background, and that’s what my bachelors has been in. So understanding that as students, you (the students) may not need the structure (in a classroom) in the way that I was used to (from law school), so instead giving it (the workload) on a day to day basis,” Paige said.

Paige understands the pressure her volleyball team is under to achieve their academic goals. According to the needs of the team, she sometimes dedicates the first 30 minutes of their 2 hour practice to focusing on school work.

“If they need to, we’re able to help them with homework and build a connection in that way, but balance is not easy. It’s not the same every day or every week, so they do what they can to prioritize what’s important for them, as well as being a student first,” Paige said.

As a professional, Paige realizes how much she relies on writing things down and keeping a calendar, which can also be attributed to her parents.

“She’s seen (managing time) growing up. She works with a calendar, and that’s how she’s able to manage being in two leadership positions,” Paige’s mother, Lynette Pass, said. “It’s all about time management, and Ka’lah goes strictly by calendar.” 

Still, it took time to figure out how to handle issues in the classroom and on the court throughout the semester. However, she applies the skills she’s learned throughout her experience to any stress or disruptions there are while she’s instructing or learning.

“I feel like Ka’lah is very organized. Now, as a kid she was all over the place, but with a lot of structure and guidance, she’s taking the organizational skills that her mother and I have instilled in her and took them to 1000,” Paige’s father, Franco Paige, said.

Though, no amount of organization can stop the unexpected. The strong support system at Cedar has helped Paige through planning events for the team, and figuring out how to create a space in her classroom where students can feel comfortable.

“We have an amazing support group from our parents alongside our community. They jump in a lot to assist us in those things, we send out a sign up list for our parents. Sometimes we meet them at the last minute, but they’ve always been super supportive about doing that,” Paige said.

The previous two years of coaching JV had allowed her to become accustomed to the way running a team worked. This year, the team has been very determined to advance their skills and relationships with each other.

“The girls are great. We have a lot of dedicated young ladies who are on the team, and I’m excited to see us grow,” Paige said. “This is a fun experience for us, but making sure that we’re growing and building community within volleyball has been a true and important piece for me during my first year being head varsity coach.”

For junior defensive specialist Deylin Vilchiz-Alvear, this year’s team has been a great group of girls and they have all become really close. Vilchiz-Alvear was on the JV team while Paige served as head coach. 

“My first impression of her was that she was really hard on us, pushing us really hard, and encouraging us when we were not doing as good as we could have been overall. I feel like that helped us. She was also very understanding, when people were having hard days, if anybody needed to say something, she would say ‘just come talk to me’,” Vilchiz-Alvear said.

On top of the amount of time she spends with her team to build a stronger connection, Paige has put large amounts of effort into her marketing class. From her previous years in her college classes, to taking additional classes to prepare with. One of the things that she’s used for support is the CTAE research network, which helps instructors develop their careers in Georgia.

“I completed new teacher training, utilizing some of my educational background as well as my master’s in college student affairs and administration. Through that, we talked about marketing a lot. I was also super involved in high school and college, and still now with different things. For example, I am a brand ambassador for Encourage Academy, so that’s additional training (for teaching.) All of those things help me with marketing,” Paige said.

With Paige finishing her masters in the student affairs division at UGA in May 2024, she has the experience of advertising ideas and items. However, this year she wants to teach students that marketing isn’t only for advertisement. 

“Marketing for the students, in my opinion, is them being able to promote who they are as people. Every day we are marketing and showing who we are day in and day out, there’s always someone observing us. And so we started this class talking about it on a personal level,” Paige said.

Paige wants to create a place where students can work on themselves and their endeavors. For instance, some of her students have businesses, and she wants to give them the opportunity to learn and build upon their current knowledge of marketing in the class.

“Being able to interpret that for those people who have businesses, those who are interested in starting businesses, those who want to go to school for business, and just those that find marketing to be fun, marketing isn’t just making a flier and putting it out there. Being able to communicate with people is being able to think of different avenues and think about it from an economic standpoint as well,” Paige said.

Creating projects gives her students the chance to thoroughly learn how to manage promotion. They get to design products, create an advertising plan, and discuss how the item might indulge the eyes of viewers.

“One thing that they just did was a marketing strategy project, and they created their own product or service, because in the market, both products and service, they created something fictional, whatever they wanted to come up with. I think one group is doing a flying skateboard, so I’m excited to see how that comes to life. And they’re just figuring out how they would want to price that, how that would be promoted, distributed, created, so all of the pieces that come into marketing,” Paige said.

During her first semester of teaching, Paige has given students different opportunities to learn how to experience marketing objects for imaginary projects or for their own business, which allow them to prepare for the future. For freshman London Davenport, it has been a good class for her first year at Cedar.

“It’s been a fun experience and it’s different from my other class experiences. Right now, she’s teaching us about things we are going to need to know for our jobs and future plans and how to tie it into our own businesses in difficult situations,” Davenport said.

Though Davenport may not have her own business, taking this class has encouraged her to start one.

While on the court, in her classroom, and surrounding the people she loves, Ka’lah Paige strives to make a difference.
“She believes in giving a helping hand. Whether it is at home in the community or with her friends, she just started believing in giving back through volunteering. She believes being dedicated to whatever she’s in or she starts, she’s very dependable. She’s someone you can always count on, and Ka’lah is one of those at the same time you can count on her,” Franco Paige said.