Teaching as Adventure Training: True Stories From the Journals of a Teacher in Pursuit of Peace

By Rick Rogers

Part memoir, part autobiography "Teaching" recounts the adventures of an educator, Vietnam vet, children's author, peace activist and storyteller. It's a tale of a teacher's belief in the magic of working with children.

 As an educator Rick Rogers also believed in authenticity.  Whatever expectations a teacher might have of their students, teachers must first model that behavior be it through creativity, patience, sensitivity, perseverance or moral integrity.  

When a college professor suggested journal writing as a way to inspire children to write, middle school teacher Rick Rogers took that notion to heart.  Nineteen years and thirty-five volumes later, "Teaching" tells the story of how the pursuit of being an author of woodland fiction for children leads from the suburbs of Buffalo, to the backwoods of Maine and Arkansas, through hundreds of school libraries to war torn Nicaragua and exile in New Zealand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Timberdoodle Publications
• Release date: Jun 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393742951

Rick Rogers

Rick Rogers is a storyteller of the ancient oral tradition.  He is the author of three collections of woodland fiction for children and young adults:  Ballads and Tales of the Woods, Critters, Woods and Water, and Earth Tales and Bird Song.  He retired as a middle school writing science teacher in 2011 from the Spencer Van Etten School district in upstate NY where he lives and is presently a member of the SVE Board of Education.    Stories, songs and storytelling videos for children and teachers can be found at earthtalesandbirdsong.com

Book preview

Chapter One  Teachers

In my honest and biased opinion there is no greater professional calling than teaching. Teachers are the heart and soul of a culture.  We reinforce or lay the foundation for literacy and a love of reading and writing.  We inspire and often ignite the spark of curiosity that leads to a love of learning in the arts, music, math, science and technology. 

Teachers may not do this individually, but for nine months a year over twelve years children and adolescents move from one set of our hands to another.  Over that time span kids spend more time each day with their teachers than they do with their parents or guardians.  That’s got to make a difference.

Okay, so teachers don’t pull teeth, perform brain surgery, rebuild transmissions, design solar panels or construct expansion bridges.  However, there’s a good chance that a teacher laid the groundwork for all those other tradesmen or professionals to go off and seek their fortunes when the time was right. 

There is an aura to teaching and working with children that brings with it one of those cosmic, intangible and mystical halos that cannot be seen or captured with an MRI.  It’s a force that opens doors to the unexpected and sheds light on paths that lead to personal gratification and professional fulfillment. 

Needless to say, that might sound like a bunch of mumbo jumbo and hocus pocus to teachers grinding it out at low wages in dilapidated schools with thirty kids in their room. 

I did not grow up dreaming of being a teacher. At 17 years old I was a junior in high school working as a bag boy in a grocery store in rural still racially segregated central Florida. At that point I figured that with any luck after my senior year I’d get a job in the meat or produce departments and eventually maybe work my way up the grocery store ladder to store manager.

Where I came from only the rich kids went to college because in those days the concept of community colleges for the rest of us was just taking hold.  The worst-case scenario would be on graduation day I’d be handed a diploma in one hand and a draft notice in the other.  And it’s one, two, three, what are we fight’n for?  Come on now, don’t give a damn, we’re going to Vietnam!

Nor did I come from a family of academics.  My mom and dad were loving parents who for as long as they could did their best to provide a wholesome home environment for my two older sisters and me, but they came from a different era.  My dad quit school in Upstate New York in 9th grade during the Depression and became a crackerjack automobile mechanic. He worked on cars until he retired at age 72 in 1992.  My mom grew up in Cuba and had an equivalent 9th grade education.  She was a stay at home mom until marital problems led to a dissolution of their marriage.  After that my mother went to work in an egg factory. For me, it was the divorce that would set forces in motion. 

My dad had decided to divorce my mother in the summer of 1965. The divorce wasn’t really a big surprise considering the nights I could hear them through the walls shouting and growling at each other. My dad informed me of his plan one evening that summer when my mother was out of town. 

First, he informed me of the divorce itself then he went on to broach another idea. Divorces are notoriously ugly affairs, he explained, so how would I feel about moving to Liverpool, NY to live with his niece and her husband, Anne and Ken.  I had met them a number of times when my dad and I stayed in their home whenever we traveled north to visit his family.  I remembered that they were very nice and friendly, and both were teachers.  Anne taught in an elementary school and Ken taught high school math.

It did not take me long to respond.  The plan offered immediate remedies to two of my life’s pressing issues.  First, my dad was offering an alternative to a future dimly lit by a managerial position in the meat department at Kwik Check/Winn Dixie supermarkets. In all honesty life in the grocery business did not seem all that appealing.  Second, I could get out of town before my senior year started in September when I would have to face the girl who broke my heart when school had ended in June.  It was a good time to get out of Dodge.

Looking back at the experience, I think my father’s plan to take me north to live with his cousin had two strong motives.  The first one we talked about many years later when he and I spent time together in his shop.  Watching me grow up with him around the garage, he deduced that my mechanical aptitude was about zero so there was no sense wasting time on me even thinking about being a mechanic.  He also knew that mechanics never seemed to be able to unionize so they most often worked long hard hours for minimal pay.  Where was the future in that?

The second motive for having me move up north with his niece and her husband was more cynical and something my father and I never discussed.  He and my 20 year old sister drove me from Eagle Lake, Florida to Liverpool, New York in early August 1965 for a simple reason, tit for tat.  My mother went to Arizona to spite my father, so he never told her of his plan to take me away, he never discussed the idea with her nor was she consulted for her opinion. 

When my mom got home in late August, her 17 year old son was gone. Over the next 10 years my mother and I would probably spend no more than three weeks together total, a couple days when I graduated from high school, and a couple days at Christmas or spring breaks now and then.

I don’t believe teenaged males spend much time pondering their emotional environment.  Moving across the country away from my mother, my father and sisters to live with a cousin I hardly knew just seemed like the right thing to do.  However, at the still impressionable age of 17, moving in with Anne and Ken Sherman was a godsend emotionally and environmentally.

The contrast in homes became immediately apparent.  Anne and Ken’s marriage was one of mutual respect based not just on love but, more importantly, friendship.  They truly enjoyed each other’s company and never spoke a harsh word toward each other.  My cousin Anne never uttered a slang or profanity and literally would not kill a fly. Ken was quiet and reserved but he seemed okay having his wife’s nephew become part of their home and family. 

Two teachers in their early thirties without children of their own welcomed me as their teenaged son.  Their academic backgrounds and interests also fostered a creative and inspiring home environment. My mom and dad loved my sisters and me and encouraged us do well in school, but in that era it didn’t go much beyond that. Both my parents read at night when the television wasn’t on, but it was mostly the local newspaper for my dad and historical fiction, i.e. romance novels, for my mom.

Moving in with two academically oriented schoolteachers who read journals and other nonfiction was a new story entirely.  Anne and Ken graded papers at night and only watched television selectively.  My newly adopted parents even prepared a bedroom for me with a desk and reading lamp where I could work quietly and study.  That was a first.  They did not want me to have a car or get a job.  It was my responsibility to be a student that proved to be more of a challenge than they anticipated. 

Anne and Ken were avid readers.  I don’t recall ever reading an entire novel until that first winter with them when the Blizzard of ’66 cancelled school for five days and kept us housebound.  The snow was so deep it covered the picture windows in the living room.  While exploring the bookshelves in their den, I found and read, back to back, Mila 18  by Leon Uris and Scapegoat by Daphne Demuriere. That was a milestone.

There wasn’t just a void in my literacy background.  Science and math were black holes.  Back in Florida just scraping by in chemistry was hard enough.  Physics was usually the next course in line and Ken naturally assumed I should take it. I tried to suggest that this might not be such a good idea, but he figured that with his skills as a math teacher I could do it. Fat chance! 

Despite Ken’s patience and good intentions and all the long arduous hours trying to decipher forces, vectors and the laws of motion, I got an F on almost every single homework assignment and clearly failed every single test.  By the end of the second marking period it was pretty obvious that in the words of an old farmer, You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit!

During the winter break at a meeting in the high school principal’s office, my adopted teacher parents must have shared what they had learned about me in a little over four months.  Basically, good intentions and hard work cannot always overcome mental deficiency. I was dropped from second semester physics and the course title mysteriously disappeared from my transcript.

What a relief.  Never again would I have to scratch my head a hundred times and suffer the humiliation of trying to figure out the rate of falling bodies in some stupid word problem that lost me after the word If in the first sentence.

Of course, two teachers were fully aware of what Fs in physics could do to my chances of getting into college.  They had every reason to be concerned.  While college had never been part of my vocabulary, it had always been part of their hopes for me.  The disconnect between the two views surfaced early in the fall one Saturday evening at the dinner table.  Family meals were one aspect of living with these two teachers that endeared me to them.  I loved to eat. 

That Saturday night I was feasting on my second pork chop when a question came out of nowhere like a left hook, So where do you think you’d like to go to college? It took me a minute, as if I were looking over both shoulders for confirmation, to figure out if the question was actually directed at me.  I remember looking at them quizzically as if to say, Are you talking to me?  Certainly, they were talking about someone else.  Going to college had never entered my mind that was still much more interested at that moment in the pork chop.

To me there was little reason to think about going to college.  The only subject I was good at in high school was Spanish.  How could I not be good at Spanish?  Growing up in Miami my childhood was immersed in Cuban culture.  With a Cuban mom, a Cuban abuela who lived with us for six months at a time back in the 50’s, five Cuban uncles, an aunt and countless cousins in Miami, I got A’s in Spanish.

When I finally stopped gnawing on the pork chop bone long enough to talk, we enthusiastically discussed the virtues and possibilities of going to college.  Suddenly, I was convinced of its inevitability. At first the feeling was euphoric.  Anne and Ken shared stories about their alma mater the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego.  They talked about their literature classes and math classes and about the professors that made going to college so exciting.

Weeks later Ann and Ken even took me to the Oswego campus where they bought me a sweatshirt with the college logo.  I wore it proudly as if my freshman year were already guaranteed.

That fall I filled out four or five applications to various SUNY colleges, with Oswego a first choice. I indicated that Spanish would be my major.  Education would be the field of study with teaching as the ultimate goal.  After what I was experiencing living with Anne and Ken, I’d have to be nuts not to want to be a teacher.  I had never actually spent much time around kids, but shoot, the neighbors asked me to babysit once in awhile. 

Springtime rolled around and when high school seniors started getting their acceptance letters, I too watched the mailbox like a hawk.  One day soon I just knew one of those letters would arrive for me and my whole world would change.

That’s what kept my expectations on level nine.  Finally, one afternoon I rushed out to the mailbox seconds after the USPS truck rolled away.  Tucked in with all the other mail for Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Sherman was a letter addressed just to me.  I hustled into the house with my eyes glued to the distinguished SUNY emblem. As if holding the Holy Grail, I opened the envelope carefully and neatly unfolded the enclosed letter.  I had to force myself to take a breath then my eyes hit the phrase We regret to inform you. 

It was bad enough to read the phrase once, but those five words drove a knife into my heart again and again.  Every four-year institution of higher learning I applied to sent the same letter with the same words.  After the third or fourth rejection I thought, Crap, don’t people in the admissions offices know how to type anything else?  It was as if they were stuck on the same keys. 

But if that wasn’t enough, the final rejection came from the local community college.  The only person I ever met to get turned down by a community college was me.  At that point the knife blade was sticking out from between my shoulder blades.

The historical record is sketchy at this point but something weird happened.  Maybe it was bribery, coercion, fate, or the earth shifting on its axis.  Maybe it was something as simple as somebody learning how to type different words.  It’s hard to tell, but what I do know is that another letter arrived from the same local community college.  Someone in the admissions department changed their mind and reversed their decision. 

This letter welcomed me to join the freshman class of 1966 at Onondaga Community College (OCC) in Syracuse.  Finally, I was accepted and on my way to higher education. It would be a slow upward climb for a guy like me from Eagle Lake, Florida.

For the next two years my experiences at OCC were proof that the community college model worked. Struggling high school graduates can be successful academically if given time and opportunities to improve their skills in literacy, science and math.  A key ingredient of the model seemed to be that community college instructors were often former high school teachers.  These academics seemed more patient, understanding and willing to nurture the wide assortment of high school grads and mature adults returning to school.

Community colleges have other advantages for young students.  Often the ability to live at home reduces the cost of room and board significantly.  A home environment can also make it easier to work part time during the school year. Combined with full time employment during the summer, frugal students can pay book and tuition fees as they go keeping the final bill for two years of school reasonable if not debt free. 

For the two years I attended OCC, spare time was devoted to two jobs, washing dishes in an Italian restaurant from September to May, and working as a laborer for a heavy construction company from June through August.  Both jobs were compliments of Ken whose idea of work took on a whole new meaning.

There were easy work lessons learned washing dishes full time that first summer after high school and on weekends through my freshman and sophomore years at OCC. The harder lessons began the summer after my sophomore year. Ken’s younger brother Daryl was a foreman for a large heavy construction company that put in sewer and water lines for municipalities.  I guess Father Ken and Uncle Daryl figured it was time for me to leave the restaurant business for real work. A teenaged boy was about to enter the working world of men. 

The good news is that working as a laborer for a heavy construction company required joining the union.  The pay went from $1.75 an hour as a dishwasher to $5.75 an hour.  The bad news is my hands went from being immersed in dishwater to gripping handles of shovels, picks and wheelbarrows.  The relative comforts of a busy aromatic Italian kitchen were replaced by spending eight to ten hour shifts hunched over in tunnels 3 feet in diameter with men, many veterans of Korea and Vietnam, who told stories the likes of which my innocent ears had never heard.  Their exploits and stories of fights and bars and women often made up for the rigors of construction work.

Oddly enough, while many of these men could be looked upon as rough around the edges, they lived by a certain code.  The foremen for this construction company probably never took a class or seminar in leadership, but they knew how to lead by example.  The ones I worked for over the next three summers never asked their laborers to do something they would not do first.  They would not send us where they would not go themselves. 

The experience of working construction would affect me immeasurably especially in one regard.  Being underground for eight hours with three men, covered in mud and dog tired, I learned that nothing looks better than going back to school in September.  Construction put the world of teaching in a whole new perspective.

Thanks to the efforts and love of Anne and Ken, I was well on my way.  I earned an associate’s degree from Onondaga Community College in May 1968. Better yet, I had also been accepted to SUNY Fredonia in the fall.

There was nothing easy about construction work or pursuing a degree in education from SUNY Fredonia.  However, Anne and Ken’s friendship, efforts and guidance on my behalf laid the groundwork for being a successful student at a four-year school. Once again Spanish classes proved to be my strength, but at the end of my junior year I decided that teaching younger students might be a better fit. 

I switched from secondary to elementary education with a minor in Spanish.  That choice would ultimately lead to a teaching career in middle schools, but it was not the only significant choice I made in the summer of 1970.  Something else was going on in the world at that time called the Vietnam War. 

Going to college in the sixties was a very different experience from the present era. It was a time of race riots in the major cities.  It was a time on campuses across the country where students rallied to protest the war in Vietnam.  Some burned their draft cards and fled to Canada.  Other students and faculty occupied buildings sometimes peacefully and sometimes not. 

College and university campuses were actually sanctuaries and havens from the violence of the war.  As long as you stayed in school, a college deferment provided shelter from the brutalities of Vietnam.  As a result, poor white, black and Latino boys were doing most of the fighting and dying.  The numbers of casualties were frightening, 11,153 young men in ‘67, 16,592 in ’68 and 11,616 mothers’ sons in ’69. 

To level the playing field Congress changed the rules in 1969.  The fighting and killing had to be spread across the social spectrum. On the evening of December 1, 1969 living off campus my eight housemates and I sat in our living room watching the small black and white television.  Our fates were intimately woven into the script of the show before us.

The Selective Service System of the United States was conducting the first of two lotteries to determine the order of call to military service for young men born between 1944 and 1950.  Days of the year represented by numbers from 1 to 366 were written on slips of paper.  The slips were put in separate plastic capsules that were then mixed in a shoebox.  The contents of the shoebox were dumped into a deep glass jar.

From New York to San Francisco tens of thousands of young men sat with their faces glued to their television sets. We all knew our fates would be determined by what the old guy on the screen did next.  Congressman Alexander Pirnie, a Republican from New York, reached into the jar and pulled out capsule number 257 or September 14.  All the young men of draft age across the country born on that day would receive induction notices immediately. 

When Congressman Pirnie pulled June 23 from the jar on his 109th grab, my birth day took on a whole new meaning.  For reasons often too complicated to psychoanalyze, I was more excited than frightened or angry.  The same thing happened months later when a letter from President Richard Nixon personally informed me that I would be inducted into the U.S. military on October 15,1970.

It was not easy working construction during the summer and returning to campus in September.  Construction workers had nothing but contempt for college students who protested the war.  Needless to say, I kept my limited political opinions to myself from June through August.  Conversely, college students often felt anyone who supported the war was an ignorant fool.  Any positive sentiments I had about joining the military I kept to myself.

I certainly never told anyone but my girlfriend that in the spring of 1970 I had taken and passed the battery of tests offered by the Air Force for pilot training.  If I was going into the military, I wanted to be an officer and a pilot.  At that time as a young man I was still under the illusory spell of patriotic duty and heroic militarism.

Changing majors from secondary to elementary education at the end of my junior year  had both an up and a down side.  The up side was a remarkable student teaching experience for an entire semester at Heim Middle School in Williamsville, NY.  Half of the semester was in 6th grade and half was teaching 7th and 8th grade Spanish.  Que bueno!

The down side was I could not graduate on schedule with my class.  Instead it was necessary to take two courses the summer after my senior year. One of those was biology 101.  It would have been more aptly titled Life Science 101 because the chemistry within that class would alter my life significantly.

There were three of us in Bio 101 who found each other’s company enjoyable, so we got together to study for tests.  One was a friendly coed and the other was a Vietnam vet named Mick.  The first time we coached each other we all got an A on the test.  To prepare for the second exam, Mick invited us over to his apartment the evening before. He lived in an old storefront the landlord had converted into an apartment.  That night we went through our notes, reviewed copies of previous tests the professor had made available, and after a couple of hours the session was over.  Our coed friend went home.

In the time I had spent with Mick in class and during the study sessions, the topic of his experiences in Vietnam never came up.  He never offered, and I never asked even though I wanted to know more about what it was like to be there.  As with many ignorant American boys I was infatuated with war stories and completely out of touch with reality. 

Having grown up in Miami in the fifties during the heyday of the drive-in movie, my mom and dad took my sister and me to every WWII flick ever made.  I was weaned on war movies starring John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Kurt Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Aldo Rey and every other Hollywood celebrity who could fit into fatigues and a helmet.  Throw in the Combat series with Vic Morrow from television in the 60’s and there was no way I could escape from the false illusions of militarism.

While Mick and I had not spent that much time together, we did enjoy each other’s company.  Being a good host Mick asked if I would like a beer and from there we shared another common substance with a pleasant aroma that seemed to be closely associated with Vietnam Vets.  Soon, with both a lose mind and tongue, any reservations of prying into Mick’s past went up in smoke. The conversation turned to his experiences in Vietnam.  It became obvious to him that my curiosity about the war and the U.S. military were both hopelessly naïve and seriously misinformed. 

I had either let the genie out of the bottle or had opened Pandoras box, but I had pushed Mick far enough. Sometimes people with real world experiences can only take so much before they feel compelled to act against stupidity. Mick began telling me that he had been a combat medic. I don’t recall whether he had been in the highlands or the delta regions of South Vietnam, but it was his job to move with small or platoon sized groups to care for the wounded and dying. His mind eventually moved to more graphic memories.

Do you know what it’s like to move from one guy to another with their bodies blown to shit?  To have to drag some guy into a ditch who’s missing his arm or his leg?  To shove some guy’s stomach back into his body and have his guts all over your hands and splattered all over your face? 

Mick was honest and blunt.  If I were you, I’d go to Canada.  Screw the United States, man, get out of here before they can get their hands on you!  You’ll die for absolutely nothing.  There’s no justification for that war.

I told him that I could never do that.  I couldn’t just leave the country.

All right, he said, but don’t enlist in the Air Force.  If you sign up they’ve got you for at least four years and they can do whatever they want with you.  Go with the draft. The worst that can happen is you get sucked into the Marines.  Either way, if you live through it, it’s only two years and you’re done.

A couple days later I called the Air Force recruiter and told him that I was no longer interested.  I completed my bachelor’s degree in Education by late July 1970 and was on my way to being a teacher. 

On the morning of October 15, 1970, I waved goodbye to Anne who had worked so hard and given so much of her life to help me to achieve that goal. However, when Ken and I got in the car he didn’t drive me to a school for a teaching job.  Instead Ken drove into downtown Syracuse and dropped me off at the United States Army Induction Center. 

Chapter Two  Breaking the Mold

Richard M. Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, played a significant role in helping me land my first teaching position in 1972.  Nixon did not exactly ask me if I wanted or needed his help.  He didn’t even offer to write a recommendation.  It’s also doubtful that I was even in the back of his mind when he and his national security team met in the Oval Office to discuss his war strategy in Vietnam and reelection campaign in the early seventies. Nixon made choices though that nudged a schoolhouse door open just for me.

Actually, I have nothing but contempt and loathing for Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger.  To get elected in 1968 Nixon pledged to bring the war in Vietnam to a close.  Instead, during the first two years of his administration more young American and Vietnamese men died than in all the previous years of the war. By 1971 Nixon’s political advisors understood that to get reelected the administration had to change its war strategy in Vietnam.  American voters were not likely to reelect a President who promised to reduce U.S. casualties then once elected sent thousands more to the slaughterhouse.  They didn’t call him Tricky Dick for nothing.

The new strategy was to reduce the numbers of combat soldiers in Vietnam and intensify the technological destruction with B52 carpet bombings.  After basic training when thousands of us would normally have become cannon fodder in Vietnam, we were diverted to Europe as part of the North American Treaty Organization (NATO).  U.S. forces stationed in Europe as part of NATO were the last defense against the Warsaw Pact countries should they decide to invade western Europe under orders of the Soviet Union.  Ah, those were the good old Cold War days.

By 1971 Nixon’s military and political advisors decided to reduce the numbers of soldiers in the military overall, so they came up with The Drop.  The Drop was an early release program where military personnel in the States had six months dropped from their military time, those in Europe saw their commitment reduced by five months, and soldiers in Vietnam had four months dropped.  You would think that if you wanted to get soldiers out of harm’s way fast, it would have been smarter to get the guys in Vietnam out first.  But nothing in my military experience led me to believe that decisions made at the higher levels of command made a lick of sense when it came to saving anyone’s life.

In the spring of 1972, I was a 71Q20 (information specialist, i.e. a journalist) stationed at the Theatre Army Support Command headquarters in the West German city of Wurms.  I had recently and miraculously returned from having spent that winter on the International Ski Patrol in the Bavarian Alps but that’s another story.

Thanks to The Drop I was a short timer and with the day getting closer when I would gloriously get out of the Army, I figured I’d better plan for the future.  That plan evolved around a teaching position and the most logical place to start was Heim Middle School where they knew me as a student teacher.  I sent a letter to Bob Schaefer, the principal and WWII veteran, letting him know I would be a veteran by mid May and if there were a spot open in the fall, I would welcome the opportunity to teach in his school.

Bob Schaefer’s response arrived within a couple of weeks.  He thanked me for serving my country and included an application.  I took care of the paperwork, got out of the Army in May and returned to Anne and Ken’s to resume a normal civilian life working construction again that summer.  In late August thanks to the support of Bob Schaefer I was off and running back to Williamsville as a sixth grade language arts teacher at Heim Middle School.

Teaching in Williamsville was a rookie teacher’s dream come true.  The superintendent at the time, Dr William Keller, was noted as being both child-and-teacher centered.  His progressive and creative ideas were a model for administrators and teachers.  Dr Keller received widespread support among the local taxpayers, many of whom were doctors, lawyers, professors, company CEOs, dentists, pharmacists and owners of private businesses.  These parents had benefited economically from academic achievement, and they expected as much for and from their children.

When I first began to attend teacher conferences in the greater Buffalo area, teachers would often ask each other, Where do you work?  When I would reply, I teach in Williamsville, the response was usually, Wow, how’d you get a job there? I never saw any reason to go into the whole story about Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

Much of what happens in a school is influenced by the temperament and vision of the principal.  I was lucky to be under the tutelage of Bob Schaefer.  His approach as an administrator was serious and straightforward.  He was a hardworking, diligent and thoughtful man who I often assumed was molded by his experiences as a bomber pilot in WWII.  He expected his faculty as professionals to give 100% as he did.  If you fulfilled that expectation, Bob Schaefer offered the freedom to teach.  The effect of this managerial approach on his faculty was unbridled creativity.

It was a blessing as a first year teacher to be a part of a school where teachers truly inspired each other.  In an atmosphere of trust and collaboration it is not competition that drives achievement but mutual respect and admiration.  Throw in the unconditional affection for enjoying and appreciating the company of adolescents and Heim Middle School was a wonderful learning environment.  Given similar circumstances almost any school could rise to the challenge.

The assistant principal at Heim was also a WWII veteran, an ex-Marine named Bill Schneider.  He was a short and stocky man with a confident, quiet disposition.  Within the school word among the miscreants was that no one wanted to have to visit his office twice.  There was something about his manner and approach with the kids who got sent to his office that made any threat of corporeal punishment irrelevant.

During faculty meetings when it was Schneider’s turn he would often repeat the same message to us.  His advice stayed with me and guided me throughout both my teaching and parenting careers.  Schneider would stand, look at his assembled faculty and quietly offer this advice, As a disciplinary measure if you threaten a kid with some type of punishment, make sure it’s something you can do.  Don’t tell a kid you’re going to wring his neck because unless you plan on doing it, he’ll learn that your words are vacuous. After awhile they won’t pay any attention to you.  If you tell a kid you’re going to do something as punishment, then you better be able to follow through and do it.  And don’t start out with your big guns first. Start out with something that’s appropriate as a consequence but leave yourself room to gradually increase the pressure.  The important thing is to follow through with whatever you say you are going to do so they learn that you back up what you say.

I could not get enough of Heim Middle School.  Bob Schaefer was always known for being the first person in the building every morning at 7:00 a.m. even though school did not start until after 8:00.  Well, he was first until he soon noticed my car already there each morning.  It was never my intent to show him up, I just liked getting into my room early. Likewise, Mr Schaefer got used to seeing that same car still there on his way out.  The pattern would not go unnoticed by the principal.

A key ingredient to successful teaching is planning and preparation.  I found that by getting into my room early when no one else was around, I could get materials together, lessons organized and the room prepared without interruption.  It almost seemed like a matter of survival because there’s nothing static or stationary when working with children and adolescents. Once the kids came through the door it was all hustle and flow from the opening to the closing bells.  Once the kids were gone, and the dust settled, I would get the room back in order, formalize plans for the next day or grade papers until my eyeballs told me it was time to go home.

Home was a small flat on the second story of a house in one of the older neighborhoods of Kenmore a community of Buffalo.  The bottom floor was rented by a married couple who were both graduate students at the University of Buffalo. The rent in those days was $140 per month.  The house was less than a mile’s walk to the old University of Buffalo campus and only a fifteen minute drive to Heim Middle. The proximity of home to classroom fostered another work routine that would follow me throughout my career.

This was my first experience of living alone as a working professional adult.  Part of my lifestyle was fashioned by Anne Sherman and part was molded by Uncle Sam.  Anne’s commitment to a clean and orderly home rubbed off on me and the Army helped with the discipline.  Every Sunday morning like clockwork I rose early, grabbed my laundry, drove to Dunken Donuts for coffee and one plain donut, then headed to the laundromat.

As soon as I returned home I cleaned the flat, walked to the university for a jog around the track, returned home, showered, made lunch and headed to my classroom sometime around noon. Sunday school took on a whole new meaning for me.

Sundays offered the opportunity to work on bulletin boards and getting posters on the walls to make a classroom an inviting and creative space where kids felt welcomed and appreciated, a place where they liked to be.  By the end of a regular teaching day there often was not much energy left for such intangibles.

I often used to think colleges should offer a class, Bulletin Boards 101.  You shouldn’t have to be a monkey to pin things where they look level and square and not all whopperjawed while holding up pieces of construction paper with one hand and reaching for a stapler or tape with the other. It’s an art to use masking tape properly so the posters you work so hard to display on the walls one day are not on the floor waiting for you the next morning.

In my room alone on those Sunday afternoons and evenings I would think, Wow, I’m getting paid to draw and color and paste and make stuff to hang from the ceiling!  I’d look out the window at the homes of the parents who paid my salary and thank them for their hard work.  A few times having forgotten about the time, local police officers would be waiting by my car in the dark parking lot wanting to know who I was.  Just a sixth grade teacher working late officer!

The hardest part of being a rookie teacher was actually learning how to work effectively and relate with kids.  As anyone who spends time with young people will attest, if you don’t know what you’re doing, kids can drive you to distraction and sometimes eat you alive.  Individually most kids are pleasant creatures but throw in group dynamics and peer influences, and the classroom has the potential to be an adult’s worst nightmare.

After the first few months at Heim Middle I knew I was in the right profession.  I loved the work, but the kids were the monkey wrench. I found myself often losing my patience, raising my voice, barking at certain kids and relating to them like an old tired adult. Something was wrong. I was leaving school not feeling good about my day and that was not right.

From Psych 101 at Onondaga Community College, I remembered the instructor, Mr. Manfred Mancini, teaching about self-actualization. He talked about knowing as an adult when you have chosen the right profession.  He told us that one clear sign is you can’t wait to get to work and don’t want to leave.  The best analogy I can give you, he told us, would be a photographer for Playboy!  The analogy wasn’t exactly a perfect match for my chosen profession, but I got the drift. If everything about working at Heim Middle was so close to perfect except my relationship with the kids, then something needed to change. 

The answer came one Friday when there was going to be a dance that night. My routine for dances up to that point was to stay at school and work in my room, chaperone the dance, then go home.  I could tell though that from the way I felt that afternoon, if I did not make a change in my mental state I would go to the dance and be a crab.  It had been a rough day.  However, kids were coming to the dance to have fun not to be around some old grumpy teacher. 

Maybe I need to burn off some steam, I thought.  Change things up a bit before the kids come back.  I had never been very athletic and had never played sports in high school, but I felt I needed do something physical unrelated to teaching. On that Friday afternoon, still dressed in my teacher clothes, I decided to go outside the building and  walk laps around the playground and sport’s field until a change in mental chemistry was noticeable.

The following week I brought gym shorts and shoes with me to school.  When the after school activities were over and the building had quieted down, I went to the gym alone to run and shoot baskets. Running on the university track on Sundays would also be a result of this epiphany.

Another remedy for daily teacher frustration was yoga.  I had heard about the calming affects of this stuff so I went to the local public library late one afternoon on the way home.  Some of the illustrated texts were downright scary and there was no way my body would ever get contorted into those mystic Indian postures.  Why would I even want to do that to myself?  However, one author (who looked really good in her outfit) offered a you can do it without killing yourself alternative.  I took the book home, learned about five basic postures that can be done standing up anywhere and have continued to put them to good use weekly for over forty years. 

The commitment to be a better teacher by changing my personal behavior so I could respond more positively to the demands of middle school adolescents was invaluable.  Not only did they deserve it, but the change had other lasting positive affects.  The day to day of teaching became more enjoyable which led to more positive personal relationships with kids and their parents.  The positive changes also fostered a growth in confidence.  As a matter of fact, I was so pleased with myself that I got downright cocky.

In those days male teachers had short hair, wore sports coats, ties and dress shoes.  Sometime during the second year at Heim I came to the conclusion that ties, and dress shirts and slacks and penny loafers had nothing really to do with being a successful teacher.  Besides that, who came up with the silly idea of buttoning a shirt all the way to the top so you could choke yourself with a tie?  Slacks were impractical because getting down on the floor with the kids meant dry cleaning bills and a waste of money.  I never kept the sports coat on longer than the ride to school anyway, so what was the point?

One important lesson I learned from being in the Army was image often took the place of substance.  Clothes don’t make the man.  You can dress a guy up all spit and polish with shiny buttons and colorful ribbons from head to toe, but it doesn’t mean that when push comes to shove he’s got a backbone to fight for his convictions.  Many officers who looked good in their uniforms were often heartless with little moral fortitude.

My feeling was that as long as a person worked hard and showed up clean, neat and tidy, it should not matter what they wear. It was time for me to put the philosophy into practice. The sports coat and ties were left hanging in the closet at home, the sports shirts were replaced by flannel in winter, and much more practical corduroys took the place of slacks.  There was nothing more comfortable than a good pair of work boots, so the loafers also bit the dust.

The next item of change was hair.  Once out of the Army I swore that no man would ever again tell me how to wear my hair.  I had always thought that Native American men looked good with long shoulder length hair.  I also remembered back in 5th grade when my mother took me to Cuba shortly after the revolution in 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrew the U.S. backed Batista dictatorship. 

My mom and I were sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen in Havana when a cousin came in dressed in fatigues with a pistol on his waist.  That impressed me almost as much as his long black hair and thick black beard.  The men who fought with Fidel in the mountains were called barbudos. I kind of felt that pirates looked cool too but their motives were not exactly revolutionary.

At some point during that second year Bob Schaefer reached a point where he felt he had to say something. As the hair reached beyond my ears and curled around the collar, I’m sure he heard through his office door the envious comments the secretaries made of my naturally curly hair.  One morning when I entered the office to get my mail he came up behind me and said, So when are you going to get a hair cut?

Jokingly I replied, I don’t know, Bob, the barbers must be on strike.

I called him by his first name right from the get go.  Another legacy from my military experiences was an acute aversion to rank and hierarchy. The U.S. military is based on a system determined by rank and privilege that is not only archaic but ineffective. I pledged that no matter who a guy was, principal, doctor, president, it didn’t matter, they would all be addressed by their first name until they earned my respect. No position came with a title.

Bob Schaefer never said another word about my hair and he never commented on my clothes.  In those days out of 600 teachers in the district, I was the only male sporting hair long enough to pull into a ponytail.  I believe that Bob Schaefer personally did not care for the changes he saw taking place in his second year teacher.

I did not look like a teacher anymore or fit the mold, but Bob Schaefer respected my work as an educator and member of his faculty.  To Bob’s credit he was able to separate his personal tastes from his professional responsibilities.  His evaluations of my work were always of the highest ratings.

The mutual respect we established for each other professionally allowed him to overcome his personal bias and offered me the opportunity to grow and figure out who I was and what I wanted to be as a teacher.  Those strong but subtle bonds between us would be tested.

Chapter Three  Little Girl Big Trouble

Her name was Ann Povlock and she happened to be in my homeroom.  It was during the third year of my career and things at Heim Middle School could not have been better.  By then I had a better grasp of the art of teaching language arts and social studies and had established strong working relationships with colleagues and numerous friendships with parents.  Some of the moms and dads invited me into their homes to dinner and some offered invitations to their son’s bar mitzvah and their daughter’s bat mitzvah.  Ann’s parents did not share the same enthusiasm.

One of the things I did not do as a teacher was pledge the flag. Every morning five days a week in hundreds of thousands of classrooms around the United States teachers and students stand to pledge the flag. After getting out of the Army during the Vietnam War, I pledged never again to pledge allegiance to a piece of cloth wrapped on a stick.

Flags are nothing but symbolic instruments used to wrap young men and girls in nationalist fervor that is likely to get them killed or maimed by the time they’re twenty if they’re not thoughtful and careful. Wealthy men and angry politicians use nationalism to pursue their own personal gains at the expense of mothers and fathers who in tears of fear and pride send their children off to engage in the bloody folly of war. 

However, one of the things I did do as a veteran was show respect not for the flag itself but for the WWII vets who had sacrificed so much and for whom the flag meant something real. For two school years I stood reverently and thoughtfully in the back of my classroom while the kids faced the flag and did what was expected of them. I did what I thought was expected of me that was never to push my political views on children entrusted to me as a teacher. Throughout all those mornings not one student ever asked me why I did not place my hand over my heart and say the pledge.

That was until Ann Povlock showed up.  She was cute as a button, creative, energetic, outgoing and full of spunk.  She also got things mixed up because she went home one afternoon that fall and told her parents that Mr. Rogers said she did not have to pledge the flag.  For the record, that’s not what I said.

During the pledge each morning as I stood there quietly it bothered me that half the class mumbled the words lethargically and the other half leaned listlessly against their desktops waiting anxiously for the ceremony to end.  Sometimes some kids would slide and plop back into their seats before it was even over.  Therein lay the danger of patriotic pledges.  From age six on get a kid to say something over and over again, year after year, without a clue of understanding what they are saying or why and by the time they’re 18 years old you’ve got a good automaton ready for a uniform and a rifle.  It’s the youth that do the fighting and the killing and the dying. 

It also occurred to me that fateful morning that most of these children had grandparents or older relatives that either survived or died during the Holocaust, the gruesome result of unfettered patriotism, nationalism and ignorance.

Maybe it was a big mistake, but I couldn’t take it any longer. A teachable moment was at hand.  As soon as Ann and her classmates sat down I walked to the front of the room and said, Does anyone really even know why we pledge the flag?  That led to a good class discussion about patriotism that culminated in my saying something like this:

It’s important to understand what you are saying and to know why you are saying it.  If you don’t mean what you say, then perhaps it’s better to be silent.  Go home tonight and talk about it with your parents.  Have a conversation with them about the flag and figure out what’s best for you.  If you’re going to pledge the flag then know why and say it like you mean it.

Ann’s politically conservative parents had a lot to say when their daughter came home and told them that Mr Rogers (the long-haired no longer, looks-like-a-teacher-guy) said she did not have to pledge the flag. That night or the next morning they must have said an earful to Bob Schaefer because he put a note in my mailbox requesting my presence in his office at the first opportunity.

I knew there was trouble as soon as I stepped into his office and he told me to close the door.  Bob’s door was always open, unless somebody really screwed up.  If one of our colleagues was in Bob’s office and the door was closed, there was a bad moon rising.

As soon as I sat down he said very seriously, Did you tell your homeroom that they did not have to say the pledge to the flag? It was obvious from the look on his face that I had struck a nerve and seriously offended his WWII bomber pilot patriotism and he wanted an assurance that I was not committing treason under his watch.

Making sure I did not lose eye contact, I confidently told him about what had happened the day before and why. He listened calmly and to a degree I think he accepted the teachable moment part, but he did not buy my political rationale or personal philosophy on flags.  I did not really expect him to.  He was a WWII combat veteran and I was a veteran of a mindless and stupid war still drawing blood in Southeast Asia.

Bob Schaefer sat pensively for a moment then made his decision.  Starting tomorrow I’m going to take you out of your homeroom and put you on hall duty during that time.  When homeroom is over you can go back to your class.

Sounded like a plan to me.  Okay, Bob, I said and I left not thinking much about it until that night when I was home alone grading papers in the quiet of my kitchen.  That’s when I fully understood the implications of Bob’s decision and my agreeing to it. 

Wait a minute, I thought.  For ten minutes of the day he’s saying I’m a bad influence on children and should not be around them, but for the rest of the day I’m okay.  That doesn’t make any sense.  You either are or you aren’t! 

I did not feel that I was a bad influence on kids, so I went to bed having made up my mind to return to his office first thing in the morning early when it would be just the two of us around.

Bob was busy at his desk when I stepped into the doorway and knocked quietly.  He looked up, put his pencil down and invited me to take a chair.  When we were ready, I said politely, I thought about what you told me yesterday and I cannot let you take me out of my homeroom!

It was as if someone on the carnival midway had taken the heavy mallet, pounded the pad and sent the weight instantaneously skyward to set off the bell.  His complexion turned beet red, his eyes widened, his face changed from all business to a scowl, he leaned forward across his desk and as soon as his index finger pointed right between my eyes he declared authoritatively the phrase that can end a teacher’s career in a heartbeat, That’s insubordination! 

Teachers can screw up a lot and still keep their jobs, but the one thing that can get them immediately thrown out the schoolhouse door is being insubordinate to the principal.

My response was sincere and unequivocal.  Bob, I said, I could not be insubordinate to you!

It was true.  I had immense respect for Bob Schaefer.  If there were bullets flying and mortars landing and he told me to move and run I’d be on my feet hauling ass, eyes open head down.  If there was a fire in the school and he told me to go back in and get the kids in room 224, I’d be on my feet, dashing into the flames and falling debris no second guesses and no hesitation because I trusted his judgment and respected him as a leader.  He was an officer and a gentleman.

From the eye contact, facial expression and conviction conveyed in my voice, he understood the truth in my words. Just as if that weight had dropped vertically right back down to the bottom, his hand dropped, he sat back, his face took on its normal color and he asked thoughtfully, What are we going to do?

I don’t know, Bob, I replied.  I really didn’t know what to tell him.  All I knew was that he was the one with the problem.  I was fine staying in my homeroom doing my job.

I returned to my classroom glad to get back to work.  However, under the circumstances and the seriousness of the situation, I called the union president that afternoon. I was very involved with the union by that time and it was a good thing.

The president of the Williamsville Teachers Association (WTA) was Braden MacDonald, a health teacher in the other middle school.  He and I had been spending time together once I decided to get involved with the union.  Sometime during my rookie year I realized that it was important to be engaged in school politics because like it or not politics affects our daily lives and work. 

As a veteran I understood that many men in positions of authority make decisions based on their personal interests with little regard for the consequences on life and limb.  If John Q Public does not stay informed or involved, those same men will take advantage of his apathy sometimes at great human or environmental cost.  A group of selfish and angry men had already messed with my life once and I would not sit back and let it happen again.

Braden McDonald was a smart leader who knew he had a live one on his hook when I started volunteering in the union office.  The WTA had over 630 members and a union that size warranted an actual office in a rental space.  Braden reeled me in with lots of jobs that a single eager teacher was willing to take on.  With no children or family to go home to, I had time after school to show up at the office and help out.  Having been trained in the military as a journalist, I was also eager to write for the WTA newsletter.

That night when I called Braden and told him about what had happened with Bob Schaefer, he replied, Don’t worry.  A NYSUT rep will be there first thing in the morning.

I felt comforted knowing that the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) union would have a labor relation’s specialist (LRS) there to help me.  The LRS is usually a former teacher hired and trained by the union in labor and educational law.  They are not lawyers, but they understand the ins and outs of teacher rights and labor contracts. A school’s union representative will rely on their LRS for legal advice and counsel during contract negotiations or if a school administrator pushes the envelope.

The following morning during a free period the school secretary called to let me know a gentleman was there to see me. As I walked down the hall I was comforted by images of an Ivy League lawyer, a really smart guy handsomely dressed in a three-piece suit. If it had happened nowadays I would have had images of Law and Order. 

I stepped into the office but the guy I was looking for wasn’t there.  Instead the man who stood to greet me might as well have thrown a bucket of cold water in my face.  This guy was bone skinny, shorter than me, his suit looked like he had just found it in an old suitcase and because of the mustache on his face I couldn’t help but think he looked like a weasel. 

Oh, god, I groaned to myself, surely they could have found somebody else to defend me.  If this is my legal counsel, I’m screwed!

I obviously kept those thoughts to myself and tried not to let my facial expression influence the man who