November 28, 2005
Impacts, Part 1
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.
I have been making a list of things that I would not have been able to do if it had not been for my teaching career. As with any occupation, there is great impact on the rest of one’s life – the “other” part.
Some are obvious, and apply to nearly every profession, things like the people who become your friends, the standard of living you enjoy, the way you dress, the language you use, the things you talk about when you come home from work, the things you do in your spare time, etc.
In each of the “other” significant jobs I have had, college baseball coach, military officer, security guard, baseball umpire, the attire has been a uniform. They are all jobs that operate on a strict schedule with precise, well-defined rules to guide them.
Teaching, on the other hand, differs considerably.
The “uniform” is casual dress, a big change from the days when jackets and neckties were required for men. That was the uniform when I was in school, and a uniform that I wore when I first began teaching. I still wear the occasional jacket with a sport shirt or t shirt, thought I haven’t worn a tie to school more than a handful of times in the last 15 years.
Of course, the job still operates on a very strict schedule, and there are definite rules by which I am governed, but many of them are self-imposed, self-enforced, and self-motivating.
Teaching is a job that is said to be ideal for those of us who are “hyper-vigilant,” a clinical term my school psychologist daughter uses to describe me and my fellow ADHD individuals. Apparently it is ideal because teaching allows for the creative side to flourish, while at the same time providing sufficient structure to keep us reined in.
Teaching has brought tremendous creative energy to my life. It has provided the opportunity and impetus for me to be a poet, and has provided the source and inspiration for most of my poetry, for my educational journal writing, and for my career as an educational consultant and motivational speaker.
I have become a better writer and a better speaker because I practice and model those skills as part of my job – putting words on paper and into the air.
In a practical sense, teaching has allowed me to enjoy a successful career as a baseball umpire because my working hours and summer vacation mesh perfectly with baseball’s schedule.
It has allowed me to enjoy an increasingly successful career as an educational consultant, not only by providing me with a rationale for doing it and the subject matter to present, but also by bringing me in contact with receptive, responsive professional audiences.
In a philosophical sense, probably the most important element, teaching has made me far more sensitive to my fellow humans. It has made me more aware of the vast diversity among students and teachers who, on the surface, are practically clones.
I have discovered that the aphorism about acorns and trees is essentially the truth, that children are products of their environment, and my job is to enhance the part of their environment for which I am responsible.
I once thought that the entirety of that last aspect was contained in the 7:30 – 3:00 part of my day, and an agenda that might read:
- Go to school
- Teach
- Go home
Even though that is still my simplified agenda, that middle part has become far more detailed and complicated than I would ever be able to put down in my black Excelsior Plan Book. How has the “teaching” part of my agenda changed – for that matter, how has my entire agenda changed?
There seems to be a pretty compelling argument that education in the ‘70s, when I started teaching, was better because it was simpler.
To support that idea, I look farther back, to say that if simpler is better, education was better in the ‘50s when I was in elementary and junior high school.
Everything seemed clear. There were good teachers and bad, but the difference was very clear. There were good students and bad and the difference also seemed clear. I still have my eighth grade English notebook. It is very clear.
Unfortunately, it is also very bland. It is obvious why I am a good speller and it is obvious why I am good at punctuation, because there are dozens of pages of quizzes, drills, notes and worksheets. There is no indication whatsoever that I have any writing ability beyond being able to report on a book or do research papers on lynxes, the Cuban Revolution, and Dwight D. Eisenhower before he became President Eisenhower.
I can still recite most of The Gettysburg Address, though falling down on the ending, just as I did when it was my turn to recite it in class in 1959. Once the recitation was over, I had no reason to go back and learn the rest. I believe I will do that, once I retire. On the other hand, it is something of a tribute to the system that existed that I remember as much of it as I do. In fact, I remember enough to convince my students that I know it all, because once I get about half way through, they lose interest and I can stop.
I turned the corner into high school in 1960, just as society was turning the corner as well, but education seemed pretty much the same – straightforward, well planned, strict and effective – simple.
By the time I reached college, in 1964, education was still sort of a neutral entity. The myth of the liberal arts education was firmly entrenched in America’s colleges, and I managed to get by, barely, with what in a prior version of the “good old days” would have been labeled a “gentleman’s C.”
When I began teaching, in 1975, the job seemed simple. It was at least simple on the level that I existed, in that “unknowingly unskilled” realm where new teachers begin. I was even more unknowingly unskilled than most, since in my heart I knew that I was not really a new teacher, but just a guy filling in for a while as a long term substitute. I was unaware of what public education was, and equally unaware of what I was doing as a part of public education.
My job title was English Teacher. Technically, it was Long-Term Substitute English Teacher, which meant that I was not actually a teacher in the eyes of anyone except my students, who didn’t know any better, or care.
It was like being brought up from Triple-A to the majors to fill in for an injured player, knowing all along that when the regular player recovered, I would be packing my bags for home.
The comfort to being a fill-in was the knowledge that the administration’s expectations were not for greatness, just adequacy. I knew that I had sufficient management skill and enough lesson plans in the regular teacher’s files that adequacy was well within my grasp.
I was not really aware of anything beyond the common sense mechanics of staying at least a day ahead of the students’ reading and being sure that I knew what an adverb was, for example, before attempting to teach that lesson.
Eventually things unfolded to the point where I was hired as a full-time teacher, with my own classes, my own curriculum, my own lesson plans, my own responsibility.
A significant impediment was the fact that I had taken only two education courses and had never served as a student teacher. Therefore, my total training in teaching mechanics had been during a four month tour of officer training duty at Fort Benning, Georgia. Amazing, as it may seem, that is still the best training I have ever had in the basic elements of presenting lessons effectively and efficiently.
I was well equipped mechanically, but weak in the essentials of what public education was all about.
As I taught, I started to develop a certain intellectual curiosity about the job. I eventually took a very interesting course entitled Learning Channels, based on theories which seem to have morphed into today’s trendy Multiple Intelligences, sort of a blue collar to white collar shift.
The premise of the course was that students learn in different ways. I was becoming conscious of the fact they didn’t learn just because I wanted them to, and just because I knew something didn’t mean they did. As I had discovered as a college baseball coach, the fact that because I could do something didn’t mean they could. What was obvious to me, was quite often incomprehensible to them, and vice versa.
Taking Learning Channels turned out to be one of the significant turning points in my teaching. As a result of the insight I gained, I started to become aware of the layers, the different levels of learning, and also the different levels of teaching. It was as if we were in a multi-story building and my students were on different floors hanging around expectantly, tapping their toes, staring at the ceiling, waiting for me to deliver something.
I, on the other hand, was zipping up and down the elevator, trying to get off on the right floor at the right time, trying to figure out the process required to make these deliveries efficiently.
Herm Card, a member of the Marcellus Faculty Association, teaches English at Chester S. Driver Middle School in Marcellus.
Herm Card