May 19, 2006

IMPACTS II: The accidental teacher
Things I learned about teaching without even trying

By Herm Card

Editor's note: This column chronicles Herm Card's musings in 2005-06, his last year of teaching before retirement. Future installments will be posted here at www.nysut.org/herm.

Add your comments and observations through e-mail to: retiring@nysutmail.org.

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Since 1951, when I entered kindergarten in George Washington Elementary and
Junior High School, there has not been a year in which I was not engaged in some type of formal education, either as a student or teacher. I have been in school for 55 years.

Teacher School Part I: Classroom Management: Mrs. Curran, Mrs. Thomas and me — Speaking softly AND carrying a big stick

Generally, there were no behavioral issues at George Washington. Partly because Miss Jennie F. Snapp was the principal. It later became Jennie F. Snapp Jr. High when I was in fifth grade. A good piece of advice is to never mess with someone for whom a school is named, especially someone who is still the principal when that happens.

We didn’t question behavior — we just behaved. If a parent had to come to school for a conference, there would be no question as to the reason or outcome. There would be no advocacy, no mitigation, and no questioning the teacher’s fitness to be in front of a bunch of impressionable young minds.

My aunt had been a teacher in this building, and I didn’t have a prayer if I misbehaved. If I ever seemed to be edging toward typical adolescent behavior, the dreaded “Hermon, what would your aunt think? “ would yank me back from the behavioral precipice. My one trip to the vice principal, precipitated by a friend and me jamming ourselves in the coatroom door trying to be the first one out resulted in that question being asked three times in less than 15 minutes; once by my teacher, once by the vice principal and once by the office secretary.

The time we set the fields behind the school on fire with our match guns went undetected, or I’m sure I would have spent junior high in reform school.

In seventh grade, Jim and Tony and I discovered that if you cut a pea shooter to slightly shorter than the width of your hand, it would become a very handy concealed weapon in the classroom. For a couple of days we discreetly sniped at each other in Mrs. Curran’s English class. On Day Three, she called me into her room after lunch, and told me that she was aware that some of the boys seemed to be shooting dried peas around her room. She knew I wasn’t involved, but because the other boys respected me, I might be able to get them to stop.

So, when the three of us next got together, I told them the story with, of course, the smugness of someone who had gotten away the seeming crime of the century. With very odd looks on their faces, they reported that each had had the same conversation with Mrs. Curran. No one else in the class had been shooting peas, no one else in the class had been called in. No one shot another pea in her room.

My eighth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Thomas (see poem, “Mrs. Thomas“) took the classroom management lessons to the next level. It seemed to us that she could stop a clock with a withering glance, so there was no possibility that a typical eighth-grader could survive any deviation from the classroom order. Herm, Jim, and Tony were now Hermon, Roland and Anthony. By referring to students by their proper names, the same names our mothers tended to use when we were in deep trouble, she kept us constantly on edge and always ready for the ax to fall.

When the ax fell, it fell swiftly and without mercy. There is no detention room in any school that could compare to Mrs. Thomas’s classroom from 3:30 to 4:20. It was the ‘50s, the days of writing “I shall not talk in class without permission, “ or “The classroom is not the proper venue for socializing, “ or “I shall endeavor to maintain a clean, neat and orderly desk, “ over and over again…neatly. Punishment, pure and simple. Self-esteem had yet to become an educational issue.

The lesson, however, was that no one was immune. The best students, Hermon, Roland and Anthony, suffered the same punishment as everyone else. The difference was that the consequences disavowed us of the need to repeat the process, and certainly got the attention of others who might be tempted.

Her approach prepared me far better than I realized to handle a classroom. She demanded our best behavior and punished failure to deliver it, but she punished fairly Her rules were clear, as were the consequences for not following them. There was no favoritism for the better students, no prejudice against the “non-achievers. “ The only prejudice was against bad behavior.

Teacher School Part II: Classroom Management: Managing and teaching begin to meld

In high school, I learned more about classroom management, and once again, I didn’t realize it at the time.

After eighth grade, we had moved from Endicott to the neighboring town of Endwell. My high school, Maine-Endwell, was new — in 1964, I was in the second graduating class. Because the high school was new, so were most of the teachers. Very few had more than a year or two, if that, of experience. Since my junior high teachers were all veterans, the change was dramatic.

Classroom management was no longer based on the strict rule of the “older “ teacher, but know on a different model, no less strict, but expressed in a different manner.

Bob Dylan was about to reveal that the times were changing and my teachers were going to confirm it.

These younger teachers had been taught by the same generation of teachers that I had, and were bringing the same ethic to the classroom. They modeled behavior, established rules and followed through, but they had a different attitude toward the students. These young men and women were able to relate better to the students, yet were able to maintain the distance needed for us to retain the respect for the position and the respect for education and for each other. We were able to sense that as long as we deserved it, they were clear in their respect for us as well.

Tom Brierly, Bob Emerson, Walt Luberecki, Bill Phillips, Phil Gibbons — all young men, who even in their relative inexperience, were excellent teachers who I unconsciously used as models for my own classroom philosophy.

Probably the best “lesson “ that carried over into my own teaching was from Phil Gibbons. Because our regular geometry teacher was in an auto accident, Mr. Gibbons filled in for him for one marking period. Gibbons was legendary. Large, athletic and dark of appearance and mood (or so we thought), his first remarks to the class were something to the effect of “whatever you’ve heard about me, believe it. “ And we did. And we worked far harder for him than we had for the regular teacher.

I did so well, that at the end of the marking period, I had scored 100 on every piece of graded work except one quiz on which my misspelling of “isosceles “ had cost me a point. His written comment was “ouch! “ (A comment I use to this day for such things).

When my report card grade was 99, not the 100 I expected, I approached him, somewhat cautiously, with the logic that an average of 99.999 (etc) would round off to 100.

His response that “Card, 100 is perfect. You weren’t perfect, “ was indeed, the perfect response. It turned on a light of logic that I haven’t forgotten, and opened my eyes to a way of handling situations that worked because of who delivered the line, the way it was delivered, and the clear logic and honesty behind it.

Teacher School Part III: How my undergraduate education prepared me for teaching and I didn’t even know it.

To blame my dismal performance as an undergraduate English major on my teachers would be unrealistic and unfair. To suggest that most of them seemed too concerned about other things than engaging their students would not be unfair. The notable exception was Professor William Hotchkiss, a math professor at the University of Chicago, turned history professor at Syracuse.

That, by itself, made him interesting. What made him compelling was something else. He was a storyteller, whose stories were of history. There was seemingly nothing interesting about the subject matter of Medieval Civilization but several friends suggested I take it because it was easy. If it was easy, I would have done better. What it was, was engaging — time well spent. Dr. Hotchkiss made history seem accessible, interesting, compelling and worth knowing. He never took attendance; there were always people in the class who were not enrolled. They just showed up to listen to him.

I followed Medieval Civilization with his History of Science course Again, my performance was not great, but my engagement was. The proof might be that my two closest friends on the baseball team, fellow Hotchkiss students, one now a state senator, the other an orthopedic surgeon, and I, persuaded the coach to let us leave Annapolis early one morning so that, on our way to our game at Georgetown, we could stop at the Library of Congress to see the exhibit of Egyptian surgical implements that Dr. Hotchkiss had told us about. The coach, skeptical at first, quickly relented when we mentioned the name of the legendary Dr. Hotchkiss.

The exhibit was fascinating. As he had said, surgical tools had not changed in form since they had been created 5000 years ago. The tools themselves had a certain impact, but the sense that he had inspired us to actually want to see something that a professor had spoken of in passing, was more meaningful to me. It has made me aware of the potential impact we have.

In the program for the aforementioned spring concert, a student wrote about me that “Mr. Card’s teaching strategies were not as traditional as teachers before, but he seemed to teach us more when we thought he wasn’t teaching at all. “ Thank you. Megan; thank you, Dr. Hotchkiss.

Teacher School Part IV: No sense rushing into anything

It would be about 20 years before another teacher would have a positive impact.

In graduate school, working, methodically, I like to say, on my masters degree at Syracuse University, Dr. Susan Hynds taught — no — showed me the key to education, the key to teaching: create intellectual curiosity (a la Dr. Hotchkiss) and provide students the opportunity and means to satisfy it.

I had taken a couple of courses from her early in my teaching career. I liked her style, her philosophy and her course material. Her classes seemed potentially difficult, but the fact that they engaged me in the process made them less so. Hard work, but not difficult work.

Twenty years later, around 1998, when I eventually decided to actually obtain a masters degree in English Education, she became my adviser and taught several of the courses I needed. In each course, she laid out a massive amount of work up front. Nothing hidden — her huge course outline. The Monster, was daunting, but the path was laid out clearly. If we wanted an A, we did this, if we wanted a B, we did that.

The work was engaging — compelling assignments that had purpose and meaning. Everything seemed relative to the person doing it, everything led to a realistic end, an end that suddenly seemed to be a beginning of something else, something that I might want to explore on my own. Something I might want to learn, and something I could use. After an undergraduate career that had been, at best, dismal, I was a willing and eager student, caught up in Dr. Hynds’ artistry. Everything I had learned, discovered or affirmed became part of my teaching, and made the last chunk of my career far better than I would have imagined.

The day she walked into class and said, “Think of something you want to know. Come back in two hours and give us the answer, “ affirmed what I thought teaching could be, should be and would be for the rest of my career; an opportunity to stimulate learning rather than demand it.

That “opportunity “ is also is one of the reasons that leaving the classroom is difficult. It’s very hard for me to imagine any other job where the premise is to show up, create and satisfy intellectual curiosity, and enjoy myself doing it.

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The impacts these great teachers have had on me have translated into impacts I’ve had on my students. I will miss that sense of positive influence, and I will miss those moments of discovery that something new has worked, that something old has improved, that teaching and learning have taken place and that I’ve had a part in it.

It is tempting to think that I have done a good job because I am a great teacher. I don’t. In fact, I’ve done a good job because I have had great teachers.

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