One-Year Wonder

For better or worse, I can now proclaim that two of my children have followed in my footsteps; although their tenures of three and five years commendably exceeded my nine-month audition, both, like me, have joined the teeming ranks of former teachers.

According to a radio news report -- and verified by an online government census -- there are 6.8 million K-12 and post-secondary school teachers in the United States, more than in any other single occupation. A more interesting -- and startling -- statistic to contemplate is the number of Americans who at some time in their working lives tested the pedagogical waters, found them too treacherous for extended immersion, gracefully extricated themselves, and moved on to drier and greener pastures.

In my modest household of six employable adults, three have followed that path. Even if one were to allow for a scholastic bias in this small sample size and arbitrarily reduce the number of ex-teachers represented from three to one, a simple extrapolation suggests that one-sixth of the civilian workforce -- 25 million people -- would fall into the same category. Does it seem all that unreasonable that there might be four times as many ex-teachers in the universe as current ones?

The foregoing analysis is not meant to disparage what is surely one of our oldest professions, for the practitioners of which I have only the highest regard, along with some very fond memories. Rather it is to congratulate them for their courage, commitment, and persistence in the face of the harsh reality that one-half of their newly-hired peers (K-12) will quit within five years.

Far be it from me to admit in this public forum that during my sixteen-year academic career -- including eight at various local elementary schools, four at E. C. Glass High School, and four at Washington and Lee University -- I actually enjoyed going to school. (Remember, the term "nerd" was not part of the vernacular in those ancient days.) I am not embarrassed, however, to confess a love for the printed word, a love which originated in my astonishment at being able to read at age six roadside signs and cereal boxes and which shortly thereafter materialized in a colossal stack of comic books -- in hindsight, a lost treasure-trove, now valuable only in the sense that it puts me in the good company of another avid collector, President-elect Barack Obama.

For a bibliophile like that, teachers were fountains of pure gold. I reveled in the streams of knowledge gushing from their lips and gulped them down like a parched nomad. Except for routine mumbling and grumbling and sporadic outbursts of juvenile humor, I was a model student: perfecting my homework assignments, memorizing and regurgitating on cue a spate of facts and figures, churning out pages of erudite essays and research papers, and aceing report cards with enviable regularity -- small compensations for my athletic and social deficiencies. If I earned praise from my teachers along the way, in retrospect, the feeling was mutual; I was blessed with a cohort in which every one was wise, dedicated, professional, and nurturing.

Across the distant sands of time marches an army of classroom warriors -- or commanders, I should say -- leading me from childhood to puberty to adolescence to young adulthood -- and unwittingly to a desire to follow in their wake:

In the fourth grade at Boonsboro Elementary School, the buxom, brassy, black-haired Bobbsey Henderson (she later married a friend of my father, William McClintic), whose notorious multiplication grids, while universally detested, undoubtedly prepped me (along with some one-on-one tutoring from a friend, Macey R.) to skip the next grade;

The merry matron, Mamie Claiborne, portly, ageless, eagle-eyed, and nimble-footed, who expertly juggled thirty rambunctious seventh-graders and a full five-course menu on the sun-drenched second floor of the Peakland Elementary School;

Bantamweight Eddie Hicks, with a face like a chipmunk, a swagger like a rooster, and a twang like a banjo, who loved the New York Yankees almost as much as his eighth-grade history, and who never let me forget the two days of his class I skipped when my father took me to see them whipped by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series;

The irreverent Bill King -- so labeled by my friend Jimmy W. for the Playboy interviews he assigned as homework -- a long, lean carrot-topped scarecrow right out of the Wizard of Oz, who made me a discerning reader by insisting that his ninth-grade English students master, if nothing else, the difference between a story's theme and its plot;

The wizened, wrinkled, frizzy-haired first-year Latin teacher, Anna Hicks, her high-pitched, squeaky voice a perfect complement to the gravelly baritone of her departmental partner, Helen Brown, who lived up to her fearsome reputation while drilling us religiously on conjugations and declensions;

The imperious, magisterial Lucille Cox, another Latin teacher, whose love of the classics radiated like a halo behind her gruff countenance, as she shepherded us painfully line-by-line through the iambic pentameter of Virgil's Aeneid;

And then, at Washington and Lee University, the steely-eyed, silver-haired patrician, James Leyburn, his chiseled profile as noble and solemn as an Egyptian pharoah's, whose legendary lecture on the death of Socrates never failed to move him -- and his entire Ancient History class -- to tears;

The quizzical, querulous philosopher, Harrison Pemberton, who guided us into the labyrinthine ruminations of Kierkegaard, Kant, and Nietzshe, cautioning us always to pause, consider the methodology, and reflect on ourselves as thinking beings;

My freshman English teacher at W&L, E. A. Huntley, who whetted my literary appetite with his heavy-handed mythical and Freudian interpretations of Oedipus Rex, Doctor Faustus, and Hamlet;

Another English professor, the soft-spoken, ministerial, grey-suited Sidney Coulling, whose exquisite, precise, dispassionate lectures on the romantic poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats were notable not only for the richness of their content but also for the incongruity of their tone;

His polar opposite, the intense, brooding, iconoclastic poet, Dabney Stuart, constantly stroking his Fu Manchu goatee when he didn't have a cigarette in his hand, challenging us with his piercing black eyes and penetrating questions to plumb the depths of Josef Conrad, James Joyce, and Franz Kafka.

I basked in the aura of this last trio and the other luminaries of the mid-sixties English Department at Washington and Lee -- John Evans, James Boatwright, Severn Duvall, and George Ray -- whose love affair with literature, whose intellectual curiosity, and whose desire to engage others in critical thought and analysis found in me a kindred soul. If these were demigods who would leave their mark on hundreds of men (and later women) passing through those hallowed halls -- regardless of their final destination: law, business, medicine, academia -- I wanted to be one of them.

Upon graduating in 1969, I received a fellowship to study for a Masters in English Literature at Columbia University and launch my career in Higher Education and research, when fate intervened.

In preparation for this curriculum, and to broaden my provincial boundaries, I spent six weeks that summer traveling in Europe (on $5.00 a day -- almost). What a summer it was. I was in Rome when Apollo 11 landed on the moon -- my companion and I watched it on a tiny television in a bar at five o'clock in the morning -- and in Paris when Ted Kennedy drove his car and Mary Jo Kopechne off the the bridge to Chappaquiddick Island. And since it was the height of the Vietnam War, it should have been no surprise to anyone that, when I returned home in early August, I had received a notice to appear for a Selective Service physical.

My parents were more panic-stricken than I was -- in spite of the fact that my father was a World War II veteran (who, as an Air Force radioman in the Pacific Theater, had, admittedly, seen most of his combat from 15,000 feet). They were convinced that it was hardly unpatriotic to avoid a controversial and unpopular war and determined that I must take any and all steps -- short of fleeing the country -- to escape induction. In the distorted paradigm of the Vietnam War, draft dodging was no pejorative act but one devoutly to be wished for.

My father -- a man of action (and words) -- had wasted no time in scoping out my prospects. To leapfrog the long waiting lists at the National Guard or Army Reserve involved connections even he didn't have. An elementary or high school teaching deferment was the only viable option, but most school districts required applicants to have an education degree and a teaching certificate, which I -- trained as a scholar but not a teacher -- sorely lacked. Nevertheless, when my father learned from a friend of a friend that Appomattox County High School had an opening for a tenth-grade English teacher, he sent me off for an interview -- after a shave and a shower, my first in two weeks, and before I had time to unpack my duffel bag.

I should probably remember more of it than I do, since it was the only one I ever had; my next and last job was with Schewel Furniture Company, where, back in those days, even if I hadn't been the boss's son, an interview consisted of a welcoming handshake and a congratulatory pat on the back. Apparently Appomattox High School and its principal, Frank Chuchek, a weary, stoop-shouldered, bald-headed man, who seemed to be looking more towards his retirement than the upcoming school year, were as desperate as I was. Frank was mystified that a gentleman with a Washington and Lee degree would want to teach at Appomattox High School -- or maybe he wasn't aware that a war was going on -- figured that, with only two weeks until opening day, either I filled that tenth-grade position, or he did, overlooked my flawed credentials, and hired me as precipitously as Schewel Furniture Company would nine months later.

If I wasn't technically qualified to teach English, at least I knew something about it, which is more than I can say for the World Geography class -- for advanced ninth graders -- I was also assigned, solely because my predecessor had taught it. It would be my first exposure to that curriculum as an independent subject in my sixteen years of schooling.

In fact, it was all I could do in those pre-Garmin days to find my way to the old Appomattox High School by 8:00 every morning. My classroom was on the first floor of an ancient three-story red-brick building, from which my students would gaze wistfully at the passage of the seasons on the football field -- football, not academics, being their main preoccupation throughout the year, even when it was not being played.

Well, I had always wanted to be a teacher -- until that warm September day when I stood alone at the head of the class, thirty pair of suspicious eyes focused on my every move, mannerism, expression, and expostulation. Apprehensive and intimidated, to say the least, I instinctively understood that it was incumbent upon me to conceal those emotions at all costs.

Surely there was a cadre of kids in that room (and in my four other classes) who would respect me merely because I had been designated their teacher and who were as hungry for knowledge as I had been sitting in their seats seven years earlier, but I surmised that it was a short list. The rest either wished they were somewhere else, like out on the football field, or, since they were held captive, regarded their time indoors as an opportunity to socialize with their friends and neighbors, rather than to digest what I was attempting to force-feed them.

I had no illusions about the task ahead. I was new, young, green as a tadpole, and only a few years older and not much bigger than most of my students. With no established reputation for discipline, they were sure to test me, sooner or later. While the education instructors I had eluded would no doubt have disapproved of the metaphor, I felt like a lion tamer locked in a cage with thirty sets of sharpened claws and fangs, just waiting for me to let down my defenses before pouncing.

I quickly concluded that my control over the classroom was tenuous at best and that my only hope was psychological terror. What other resources did I have, really, when confronted with disorderly conduct, disobedience, and intrusive conversation? Physical punishment was, of course, not permitted, although I was mightily tempted, in spite of usually being outweighed. A lowered or failing grade, sadly, had little impact on these kids. Banishment from the classroom was a futile exercise, since the egregious behavior implied that absent is where the offender wanted to be anyway. And sending him or her to the principal's office was as much a reflection of my own inadequacy as it was of the guilty party's crime.

Remembering that the teachers from whom I had learned the most had ruled with a fearful scowl and an iron fist, I decided to adopt a similar dictatorial strategy. Actually, it wasn't all that difficult for me to be mean; not only was I facing down a horde of unruly teenagers, the attitude came to me quite naturally. Thus, from the opening bell to dismissal, I frowned, growled, glared, and barked, stalking about the classroom like a restless volcano, ready to erupt at the slightest disturbance. And it worked -- for about four weeks -- until one day, as Period Two was filing out, a pretty, blonde-haired girl -- I even remember her name, Sandra -- batted her eyelashes at me and said in the softest, most innocent voice, "Mr. Schewel, don't you ever smile?"

"Sure I do," I said, cracking a weak grin. "And I even have a sense of humor," which, thinking that perhaps she had a point and that I had been too cold and distant, I offered up for some amusement, just to prove that I knew how to have a good time, too. Unfortunately, the kids took that as a signal to let the good times roll. My carefully constructed firewall of discipline collapsed like a house of cards, and total war broke out. Every day a furious battle raged between them and me; even when shots weren't being fired, a ceaseless undertone of noxious chatter buzzed through the classroom.

That ninth-grade World Geography class was the most chaotic. Having made the great leap forward to High School, those kids were brimming with their own self-importance and energized by their hyperactive hormones. Once they sensed that I was in uncharted territory -- my lesson plans consisted of outlining successive chapters in the textbook as, Magellan-like, we circumnavigated the globe, discovering each country's natural resources, climate, language, religion, politics, and economy -- they literally began bouncing off the walls. I considered it a moral victory if I could keep them in their seats for fifty interminable minutes.

I had better luck with my English classes, maybe because I was so eager to awaken the students to the wonders of the great works I had studied for the past four years. I yearned to invigorate them with a love for Edgar Allan Poe, "Julius Caesar," and "Great Expectations," even if it should amount to no more than one-tenth of what they felt for the football team.

I gave myself kudos on an early lecture (even though one can't lecture tenth-graders) I delivered on the relationship between art and life (about which I am clueless today) based on photographs of the Parthenon and the Elgin Marbles. But as my classroom control crumbled, so did my idealism dissipate, and I settled into pedestrian plodding through "Adventures in Appreciation" and "Grappling with Grammar" (I'm making up that title, of course), hoping that I didn't resort to elocutionary drills (reading out loud) too often. I welcomed the times when we could turn to that grammar book, where the exercises -- vocabulary, comprehension, sentence construction -- were more explicit and could fill a whole period. (Oh, how I salivated over making those kids diagram sentences.)

I remember David, a stocky, fresh-faced boy with a buzz cut, who sat in the front row totally engrossed in my every word and quite proud of the book report he submitted on "Gone With the Wind." In spite of his attentiveness, David rarely completed his class assignments, which rendered his mastery of this 800-page heavyweight a problematic accomplishment. I was hardly surprised when, after reading his report, I consulted my own copy of the epic and found that he had copied the first three pages verbatim.

He didn't slip that one by me, although I'm sure many others did. Strolling through the aisles one day monitoring a six-week exam -- and reveling in the blessed silence and presumed diligence of my students -- I spied a girl answering questions from a completed copy of the test. I was just naive enough to be caught off guard. Cheating may have been rampant, but this was the only case I ever witnessed.

Thirty-eight years ago -- at least at Appomattox County High School -- the administrative demands on teachers were considerably less onerous than they are today -- according to the ex-teachers in my family and my own anecdotal evidence. I wasn't required to file lesson plans -- before or after the fact. In spite of my youth, inexperience, and lack of formal educational training, no one visited my class to evaluate me. There were no departmental or schoolwide meetings at which goals and objectives could be discussed. My contacts with my colleagues came during lunch or my free period in the teachers' lounge -- which I usually avoided because the plastic couch was not very comfortable and the secondary smoke was suffocating.

I particularly admired James Hall, a short, rotund, long-time history teacher (in the mold of the venerable Eddie Hicks), who rolled through the halls with a perpetual Cheshire-Cat grin on his face, a magician who had won both the respect and friendship of his students. And I felt a natural affinity for a fellow draft-evader, a Hampden-Sydney graduate named Jack, who subdued his demons with marijuana, which he invited me to partake of one evening in his apartment. Having never smoked a cigarette, I can honestly say I didn't inhale, at least enough to feel anything other than a burning sensation in my throat.

It's not often one gets a second chance to make a first impression. But at Appomattox County High School, in January 1970, I was granted a reprieve. Like their Confederate forebears, the School Board Rebels (actually, the High School's team nickname, later changed to Raiders) fought gallantly, but for a Lost Cause. After sixteen years of denial, obfuscation, obstructionism, and resistance, they finally succumbed to Brown vs. the Board of Education. Apparently, the courts had left them no recourse; the time for gradualism had expired. One day we went to a school that was homogeneous, segregated, separate but equal; the next day to one where black and white roamed the halls and filled their classroom seats side-by-side. No wonder Mr. Chuchek bore the weight of the world on his shoulders.

The transition went surprisingly well, the only disturbance a peaceful black student walkout on Martin Luther King's birthday, in protest to the School Board's refusal to recognize the holiday. The initial shock and a necessary reconstitution of classes cast a mantle of solemnity over the normally boisterous proceedings -- for an all-too-brief interlude. While I had the smallest of windows to re-establish myself as a stern disciplinarian, too many of my former students remembered my impotence from the previous semester; even the black arrivals quickly overcame their anxieties about their new environment and realized that I was a pushover. A crotchety veteran from the former all-black Carver High School, with jelly rolls around her stomach like Jabba the Hutt, admonished me not to tolerate any foolishness, but it was already too late.

My salvation that year was the weekend -- two glorious days which I looked forward to as eagerly as my students, but for a different reason. For them, it was an escape from the restriction and regulation of the classroom, a time to exert their natural disposition to roam and play (in addition to the roaming and playing many were already exerting under my watchful eye). For me, it was a time to relax, to relieve the stress that had built up like steam in a pressure cooker. I attended an occasional football or basketball game, but for the most part, I quietly vegetated and allowed the peacefulness of withdrawal to wash over me like a soothing massage. And then, on Sunday afternoon, sitting in the family room, the end of the weekend chasing me down like a police car in the rear-view mirror, I would begin to exhibit the symptoms of a recovering alcoholic frantic for a drink: a churning stomach, trembling hands, cold perspiration. Soon I would have to go back to school.

Did my students learn anything from me? I guess you would have to ask them; actually, I could ask two of them myself -- since they work for Schewel Furniture Company. Those motivated by their own curiosity, a desire to excel, or the influence of their parents probably did. For the rest -- distracted, disinterested, apathetic, not as bright -- I suspect my classes were a waste of time.

With a little seasoning and some practical knowledge under my belt, I would have done better a second year -- and better than that a third. Who knows? I might one day have found myself on par with the illustrious teachers from my past who had inspired and shaped me. But I never gave myself the chance. In March, unnerved at the thought of serving a fiver until my draft eligibility elapsed, I confirmed my status as a one-year wonder and enlisted in the Naval Reserve; even two years painting hulls and swabbing decks seemed preferable to that sentence. (How I rescued myself from that predicament is another story, related in "Civil Warrior," February 7, 2008.)

My appetite for punishment, however, had not been satiated. I went back -- to teach religious school at Agudath Sholom Congregation and Junior Achievement at Linkhorne Middle and Brookville High Schools. I found the disciplinary and motivational issues no less daunting than when I was at Appomattox County. Every concerned citizen -- businessman, physician, attorney, factory worker, homemaker -- should visit the contemporary classroom; he will emerge delirious, as if from a bad dream, shaken by the antipathy of students for whom school is either no man's land or a dead zone but stirred by the passion and valor of teachers who gamely soldier on.

Teachers seldom receive the accolades they deserve. When it comes to visibility, recognition, prestige, and compensation, on the depth charts they rank far below their colleagues who coach the major high school and college sports -- football and basketball. Ask any former player of any sport -- including baseball, tennis, track, softball, volleyball, and soccer -- who, other than a family member, was his most important mentor, who made the greatest impact on his life, and he will invariably name a coach. Is it because most teachers were indistinguishable from each other, because they glided by us like anonymous runners in a marathon? Is it because, during every hour we spent in the classroom, we wished we were on the football field or the basketball court? Or is it because of the permanent values our coaches instilled in us (and I exclude myself from the pronoun; I never played the games): teamwork, sportsmanship, perseverance, competitiveness, striving for excellence?

A person has a better chance of being successful in life -- and happy -- if he loves what he does. But for a teacher that's not enough. For while he must find joy in his subject matter and joy in the arduous and often frustrating process itself, above all, he must find joy in his students. And that is the toughest love of all. No matter how resistant, inattentive, disruptive, disrespectful, apathetic, or obtuse a child is, the heroic teacher sees within him the seeds of achievement, the potential for greatness, a heart worthy of love -- and he sees himself as a difference-maker for that child between a future of hope and one of despair.

Let us all be grateful for the seven million individuals who are brave enough and strong enough to love like that.