November 2005

A renewed appreciation of structure

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.

So why am I doing this? Why am I writing of my last year, taking up time that I could be using to pack up my 30 years worth of material or apply for post-retirement work.

Partly, I'm writing this because writing is one of the things that I do. Possibly, I'm operating on the theory that "if it's in the paper, it must be true." If I see it in print, I must mean it.

Not that I have any question as to whether I mean it or not. Rather, I have questions as to how I will react when I find myself somewhere else on the first day of school next year.

Mickey Mantle said that he had dreams - nightmares - where he would arrive at Yankee Stadium and find the gates locked and the game in progress. My fellow teachers seem to have similar dreams about being late for school and not being able to get into the building.

There is a line from my poem, "In From the Rain," about the early part of my teaching career, that reads:

"There was a nagging thought, deep in the back of my mind, that I should stay here. It was warm, it was dry, it was safe. I was afraid to leave."

I am neither afraid to leave nor prone to nightmares. I know I will miss it, but I will not dwell on that. It is time to move on to my next career, the one I have been preparing for 30 years.

The first faculty meeting of the year is long since history. Today, I moved my picture of Phil Rizzuto to the shelf behind my desk, and put Roger Maris front and center. Rizzuto wore number 10 for the Yankees, Maris number 9. Yesterday, I had 10 faculty meetings to go, today I have nine.

I will work my way down through the men who wore numbers 10 and lower for the Yankees - all baseball greats, members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, future members or, at least, worthy of serious consideration. Most of these numbers have been retired, an interesting metaphor.

That is my countdown, a countdown that will be a reflection of my past yet centered on my present and looking to the future.

Trust me - I am not actually counting the days until I retire. That would betray an eagerness to have it finished, like basic training or a jail sentence. There is no denying that there is a limit to the number of days in this final teaching year, but I have chosen to look at the year more in terms of the month-long chunks from faculty meeting to faculty meeting.

An obvious reason would be that there are fewer to keep track of, but months contain more - they contain entire units. Days are made up of lessons, things we do one at a time, self-contained moments of teaching, moments of learning, short bursts of energy five times a day.

Months are substantive. In October, we will write poetry. We can't write poetry in terms of days. How can that energy be confined by such limitations? Days have boundaries; the bell rings at the end of class, the energy subsides and has to be reborn four minutes later. Too much constraint.

But a month? Long-range energy. Thoughts like "I can't wait till that Dylan unit. I can't wait to get into Fahrenheit 451. I can't wait to get that poetry project started." These thoughts are far better than "I can't wait for Tuesday so we can go over that adverb worksheet."

I have never focused too much on day-to-day tedium, counting them off, one at a time: one lesson today, another tomorrow, 14 down, 169 to go, until there is nothing left in the file drawer.

I have spent a lot of time each year planning projects for the future. If I didn't get to them one year, I fit them in another year. Now, that luxury is gone. It all has to be done by June.

The planning and preparation is nearly as good as the doing, but not quite. 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 things are being accomplished, that it is happening right in front of our eyes. I love that feeling, far better than the results, as good as they are, of any kind of testing, local or state, low stakes or high. That is something I will miss.

So far, I have accomplished more, earlier in the year than usual. Part of the drive to go out strong means that I don't want to run out of time. In previous years, there were things I had to do, things I wanted to do, and things I would fit in if I could.

Last year I came up WAY short, failing to do a couple of the things I really enjoy. For one, we never got to read Treasure Island and did not get to talk like pirates. Arrrrrrrrrrrrggg! This year, I am determined that will not happen.

I have always tended to ease into the year, allowing them to get used to eighth grade at a fairly gradual pace. This year, I have had very little time to sit down. I have worksheets and notes and other classroom materials copied a week ahead, rather than the usual 10 minutes before the bell. My students, of course, don't know the difference, as most teachers routinely have things ready to go well in advance. For me, it is exceptional, that when I stand in line for the copier I am not also checking the clock, afraid I'm not going to have material for class. Now the problem is remembering that I actually have the materials, and finding them.

In this, the more successful part of my career, I have relied heavily on the use of the "teachable moment." I have always been thrilled by those chance encounters with knowledge; those opportunities to make something meaningful appear, seemingly, out of nothing, teaching by reflex and instinct.

Recently, however, I have become reacquainted with a sense of order and structure, a sense I had for a brief time, early in my career, when I was relatively unaware of what teaching was all about. I also remember that that was a period of time when I was, for the most part, lacking in the energy that drives me today. I was a victim of structure then, directed by some need to get from "here to there", even though I was not very sure of where "there" was.

Now that I am sure where "there" is, this sudden burst of enthusiasm for structure seems like the wonderful discovery of a very handy tool.

My students may have heard that I am retiring, but it is neither widely known nor really noteworthy enough for them to bother with. Eighth grade is a one-shot deal for them - 183 days and move on. For me, it will have been 183 days, 30 times. They will find themselves caught up in the year's energy, but they would have been caught up in the energy whatever year it was. They will just not be able to sense the difference in this year's energy, but they will get more of it than they realize. They will get me at my best.

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