ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Before signing with the Buffalo Bills this offseason, Dawuane Smoot played the entirety of his NFL career with the Jacksonville Jaguars.
“I looked at myself as retiring in Jacksonville,” Smoot said. “Some things happened with my health and I wasn't able to perform like I was able to the last seven years.”
However, despite moving to a new city, his passions off the field remain the same.
“That's been an important thing in our household, to give back, and especially since we have kids now we have to give back as much as we can so the community they grow up in will be a better place,” Smoot said.
The Smoot’s latest example of that is the creation of the Elsie Academy.
“The idea came from when we were looking around Jacksonville and there was nothing, and I mean nothing that we wanted to put our kids into,” Smoot said.
The Elsie Academy is a private pre-kindergarten children’s school that was initially created three years ago following the birth of Dawuane and his wife Aumari’s two children.
“We wanted them to have a bilingual education,” Smoot said. “We wanted them to have more of a project-based education. They didn't have anything in Jacksonville, so we decided to create it.”
“The vision came from Aumari,” Smoot said. “I give it all really to Aumari. She came up with the vision and I was just behind the scenes with the construction workers getting everything together. We really worked together when it came to that.”
The academy, which opened this past January, also offers a unique curriculum for its nearly 200 students.
“It's completely bilingual,” Smoot said. “We start with Spanish and English as well, so from both sides, especially in Florida, we have a lot of Hispanic culture down there.”
“We set ourselves apart by doing that,” Smoot said. “We start them off early and we continue with it all the way through their living experiment at the Elsie Academy.”
In addition, on top of the various educational differences, the Elsie Academy is special to the Smoot family for another reason.
“Well the name, first off, came from my grandmother-in-law, that's Aumari’s grandmother,” Smoot said. “She was a big influence in her life. She was like her second mother and she definitely was that person in her childhood that she looked up to. She was just recently diagnosed with stage four breast cancer so we wanted to leave a legacy not only for her, but for our kids and for the future Smoots.”
The future for Dawuane Smoot may now look a little different as he takes the field this upcoming season in a Bills jersey, however, his mission will only grow.
“We're looking to expand to every NFL city as well,” Smoot said. “That's one of our goals.”
“I'm just trying to do each and everything that I can to be able to figure out what exactly Buffalo needs and try to be a big part of that.”
If you’d like to find out more about the Elsie Academy you can visit www.theelsieacademy.com