October 2005

Once around and in

By Herm Card

Editor's note: This column chronicling Herm Card's musings as he began this, his last year of teaching, launches a recurring special feature in New York Teacher. Watch for excerpts in future issues of the newspaper; full installments will be posted here at www.nysut.org/herm. Add your comments and observations through e-mail to: retiring@nysutmail.org.

One of the most comforting, most welcome phrases that an athlete can hear, or that a coach can say, is: "Once around and in."

"Once around and in." It's the signal that practice is over, that one last lap will do it. All the bumps and bruises, mistakes made and corrected, praise received * all forgotten. Job well done. Time to hit the shower.

For the coach, no more barking orders, no more correcting mistakes, cajoling, encouraging, praising, or trying to get the best performance possible. No more stress for the day. It's time to hit the shower, relax, plan for tomorrow.

After 30 years of teaching, after 30 years of a job I love, I have just 10 more months, 10 faculty meetings to go. A job well done. Once around and in.

This is my last lap.

I start the lap with that sense of relief that players feel, that when it's over, it's over. But I also start it with the sense that dedicated athletes have: that this must be a lap that reflects the hard work, drive, intensity and passion that got me to this point.

I deserve to run this lap, I have earned the right to run this lap, and when I am done, I will have "left it all on the field" * I will have drained myself, will not have shortchanged myself or my students.

I will know that, despite this complete expenditure of energy, I would still be able to come back for more the next day. Pride must prevail. This time, however, after this final lap, I won't be coming back the next day *at least, not in the same way. On this "next day," after I retire, I'll be going somewhere else, not back to my classroom, but to someone else's, as part of my professional development workshop activities. I'll be going somewhere else to continue in my profession on a different level, as a ballplayer might become a coach or a manager.

The metaphor is apt. I have been an athlete and coach all my adult life: college baseball player and coach, tournament squash player, cyclist, skier, military officer, golfer, soccer referee, motivational speaker, baseball umpire.

And, of course, I am an English teacher. Something I take great pride in. I cherish memories like these: Once, a student sent me a letter from college, thanking me for letting her be unafraid to speak her mind in ninth grade. Another time, a parent thanked me for working so hard with her son, and caring how he did. Even though he only got a D, it was the best he had ever done and she was proud of him.

Thirty years an English teacher, 20-some more than I once figured I might last. Teaching was not a career goal; it was a stopgap, a way to fill some time and support myself until my true calling surfaced, until I found the job that was out there waiting for me. I had no training as a teacher, other than a couple of education classes to go along with my degree in English. My undergraduate transcript reflected four years, including two summer sessions, of less- than-stellar achievement.

Following an interval that included some time in law school interrupted by military service, and four years as a college baseball coach, my graduate school transcript reflected only marginal improvement over my undergraduate days. Remarkably, I eventually achieved a 4.0 GPA in my master's program, but it was 30 years after I graduated that I actually bore down enough to gain my master's degree in English education. I explain this time lapse as being methodical.

An interesting irony of my entrance into the MS program was that in 1998, on the day I received my acceptance ("The faculty of the School of Education has every confidence that you will become an excellent english (sic) teacher"), I also received my AARP National Association of Retired Teachers membership renewal, and the annual report of my status in the New York State Teachers' Retirement System. That was 23 years into my career.

Final lap

Seven years later, I am starting that final lap. I will retire in June, having spent 30 years wondering just how I wound up in this business and never thinking that some day I would retire. It turned out that this was the job out there waiting for me. It just took a long time to figure that out.

Sometimes it's hard to imagine how this coming year will go. Each year, I have spent time planning projects for the future. If I didn't get to them one year, I'd make plans for the next. Now, that luxury is gone. It all must be done by June.

The planning and preparation are nearly as good as the doing. The energy from day to day is measurable in the "soft data" sense that teachers have, that sense that something good is going on, that it is happening right in front of our eyes. I love that feeling better than the results, as good as they are, of any kind of testing, local or state.

I have responded to questions about retirement with indefinite responses, because I actually didn't know when I would retire. What made me decide to leave was the announcement by my two longtime English colleagues, Penny Anderson and Art Scotti (the rest of the full-time seventh- and eighth-grade English staff), that they were both retiring in June 2006.

As much as I enjoy working with new teachers, and as much as I will continue to enjoy working with them, being the only experienced English Language Arts teacher in the middle school was not the way I wanted to spend the waning moments of my teaching career. Money was not a thought, burnout was not a thought. The idea of being alone in the sense that there would be no one of my age or experience to relate to outweighed everything else. It was time to go.

Since that moment, and I remember the moment well, I have felt an odd sort of peaceful, bemused lightness in my chest. Now, when people ask how much longer I will teach, I tell them with a smile, "Ten faculty meetings. Once around and in."

Herm Card, a member of the Marcellus Faculty Association, teaches English at Chester S. Driver Middle School in Marcellus.