My Career as Context for the Study

In Fall 2018 I started my 46th year in teaching and my 62nd year in school.  I averaged about 125 students a year teaching 4 years of junior high social studies in New York State and 24 years in a high school in Kansas for the 28 years I was a public school teacher.  The simple math: 28 x 125=3500 but, of course, that number does not count the students I coached, advised or simply made contact with over the course of my career.  From the fall of 2001 to August 2019, I taught at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, mostly working with students preparing to teach history and social studies.  My college student load decreased markedly from junior high and high school teaching, but my preparation and teaching time either stayed the same or increased.  My advising time definitely increased as I helped freshmen through fifth year seniors plan their careers and future lives.

My own path to teaching was not clear.  I knew early on that I loved to read, mostly science fiction and history.  I grew up in the Finger Lakes region of New York State where one might easily stumble across a Native American arrowhead or spear point in a plowed field or come across historical markers on almost any road describing the missions of early French priests or the military campaigns of Clinton and Sullivan during the American Revolution.  Before I was a teenager my parents took the family to Gettysburg and Washington, D.C. and in my late teens I traveled to Boston and along the trail of the early patriots.  I was fortunate to have teachers whose names I still remember; Mrs. Edds, Mrs. Peacock, Mrs. Mertz, Miss Day, Mrs. Parker, Mrs. Booth, Mr. Fausold, Miss Campany, Mr. Kiplinsky, Mrs. Novak, Mr. Bogart, Mr. Mitchell and Coach Davis, plus many others who had their patience tested with my daydreaming or lack of good study habits.

My path to college was more based on the fact that one of my older neighbors was a football standout at Cortland State than the knowledge that the social studies program was unique in the state.  Cortland’s program featured a “Professional Semester” where three professors team-taught a seminar during the student-teaching phase of teacher preparation.  Without heavy doses of education classes throughout my time at Cortland I was able to take courses that left me one course short of a history major.  I also took a “cognate minor” with six hours each in Political Science, Economics, and Geography.  I had room in my schedule to take several more Geography classes so that I was all but a course short of a minor in that subject area.

There were 45 Secondary Social Studies majors in this Professional Semester seminar in the fall of 1972, with each professor in charge of 15 students for classroom observation.  The seminar met all day long for a few weeks, then we went to our placements to observe for a short time before prepping, with help from our professors, for teaching a four-week unit.  After the first unit we took a short break and repeated the process.  Basically, I was a student teacher for 8 weeks and that experience would supposedly prepare me for my first classroom.  I would not say I was woefully unprepared, but I soon found out that I had much to learn. My placement was originally Central Tech in Syracuse, New York.  Central Tech was a diverse and, from what I knew, a challenging urban school.  I was a “country boy” and had no dreams that included crusading against urban poverty and ameliorating potential school violence.  Facing those same problems in a rural environment seemed the correct path for me, but my main focus was to share my love of history and geography.  After an “interesting” discussion with the professor in charge of placements (he was not enamored with my reasoning for wanting a change in placements) I was placed at Lafayette High School, in Lafayette, New York.  The high school was across Route 81 from the Onondaga Reservation and approximately 20% of the school population was Native American.

I still have fond memories of students Kevin Bucktooth and Keith Shenandoah. Those two young men helped me with a basic understanding of life on the reservation and how the Native Americans related to the white population.  If there was a problem with a student from the “res” over the weekend they gave me a “heads up” on Monday morning.  Mainly Kevin and Keith were kind to a student teacher who was learning his craft.

The school building was part of the architectural “open classroom” movement from that time period so the room where I taught opened onto the school library, as did several other classrooms.  My lectures and activities concerning U.S. Constitutional History and court cases had to compete with Jacques Cousteau videos featuring seals barking emanating from the classroom next to mine.  The fall of 1972 was also during the time of the American Indian Movement and there was much news concerning the plight and problems of Native Americans, as well as violent protests in some parts of the United States.  My cooperating teacher, Bob Simonds, did a great job providing me some latitude in how and what I taught.  Lloyd Elm, a teacher at the high school and a leader in the Onondaga Nation, influenced my teaching philosophy.  Lloyd taught me not to take myself too seriously and provided insight into life on the “Res”.  Here is an illustration of Lloyd’s sense of humor:  Route 81, south of Syracuse, used to be notorious for winter driving problems.  The interstate was hilly and it was mounted on the hillsides instead of the valley floor.  That location meant that ‘lake effect’ snow would quickly drift and create driving challenges.  The first snowfall of that year hit and I carefully made my way up the interstate from Cortland.  I found Lloyd in the teachers’ lounge on the second floor looking out the window and then he launched into a chant and dance that went counter clockwise.  After a few circuits he turned to me and said, “Reverse Indian snow dance…I don’t have snow tires on my car yet.”

I do not remember anyone telling me that I still had much to learn and that Cortland had not taught me everything I needed to know to succeed in my career.  I do remember one of my advisors repeatedly telling me that there were thousands of unemployed Social Studies graduates throughout the United States and perhaps I should investigate another major or career.  At the beginning of my last semester at Cortland I knew I would graduate with a B.A. in Secondary Social Studies but I had no idea if I would put it to use.  I investigated a career in law enforcement, starting with an interview with Cortland State’s Campus Security, and thought about working in agri-business but ultimately put my faith in the hope that a school district would hire me to teach and coach.  I went to on-campus interviews at Cortland and had leads with schools in the Mohawk Valley and near Albany, New York but no signed contract.

A month before graduation I helped a fellow student move out of an apartment near Poplar Ridge, New York and he told me of a potential opening in the Junior-Senior High School there.  I called and was invited for an interview.  Armed with letters of recommendation from two of my mentor professors and my cooperating teacher at Lafayette I sat down with Bill Mann, chair of the Social Studies Department for Southern Cayuga Central Junior-Senior High School.  I let Bill know that I planned on having a disciplined classroom and Bill told me that, “It would be best to not smile before Christmas.”

I signed a contract with the school district before I went through graduation ceremonies at Cortland, one of three members of the group of 45 grads to actually have a job.  I was fortunate and I knew it.  Luckily my summer job, working on an assembly line at a television factory in Seneca Falls allowed me a week off to work in my classroom in July.  I found out that the junior high social studies teachers were using “learning activity packages” for the first few weeks of school that guided students through a multi-text approach in learning New York State geography and some history.  Basically, I had the first month of school lessons planned out before I even started and all I had to do was work my way through the materials and familiarize myself with the content I was about to teach.  I had an opportunity to meet one of my new colleagues and learn a little about the culture of the school district.  Apparently, I caught the attention of the school superintendent by taking time to prep for my classroom on my own time.

So here I was, a 6’2” 230-pound male, in charge of 12 and 13 year-olds, trying to teach them about New York State History and Geography and trying to make sure I was in charge of the room.  In three weeks, I had them so well disciplined that many of my students were afraid to raise their hands and some of the girls would break into tears when I raised my voice to correct some of their boisterous male classmates.  Great!  I had succeeded in scaring children into submission, which was definitely not what I intended.  I went back to Bill Mann and he suggested that perhaps I had taken the “don’t smile” routine a little too far, but it was much easier to back off than it was to put the brakes on an out-of control classroom.  I think it took me another 3 weeks for the students to understand that I was there to help them learn and I wouldn’t traumatize them when they started to lose focus.

During the first few weeks of school as I settled in I was made aware of the teacher evaluation process.  The evaluation instrument was 6 to 8 pages long and had a Likert scale of 1-6 on many different factors.  I was to be evaluated by 4 people formally, my department chair, Bill Mann; the junior high principal, a former instrumental music teacher; the building principal for the junior-senior high school building, and the school district superintendent. These individuals would also drop in from time to time for a few minutes just to see how I was doing.  My fellow junior high social studies teachers, Don Irving and Ethel Marr, would also offer advice, although not as a part of the formal evaluation process.  Both Don and Ethel let me know that my classroom door should be open to all ‘comers’. In other words, if I felt the need to hide what and how I was teaching, then I should probably re-think what I was doing.  That was great advice to which I still adhere.

My first formal evaluation by the junior high principal went well.  I did not receive top scores for everything and I shouldn’t have.  I was a rookie making rookie mistakes.  My bulletin boards were not decorated with material that reinforced the current units and I know I had other areas that needed improvement.  I did take exception with my lowest score, which was my “deportment”.   I was graded down because I leaned up against the chalk tray several times instead of standing erect, as I lectured near the chalkboard.  I took my concerns to my department chair and Bill told me that it was my responsibility to respond to comments from my evaluator with which I did not agree.  I wrote several sentences in response which basically asked how leaning on the chalk tray impinged upon my students’ learning.  I think my principal did not care for my pushback, questioning his conclusions on this part of the evaluation.  We were to have some disagreements in the future but we basically got along well.

The first formal evaluation by the superintendent is burned into my memory.  The class was studying the culture of the Iroquois and the day the “super” came in the lesson called for the students to build longhouses.  The students had bark, twigs and mounting boards.  The class had a basic understanding, through readings, drawings and lecture of the reasons for why the Iroquois chose to live in these structures but I had no idea if they would be able to apply that knowledge in the construction of the houses, nor if they would be able to explain why they were constructing these buildings to the superintendent.  I do not know if I was visibly sweating when he walked in the room and sat down next to a small group of students building a longhouse but I sure felt like I was.  After many minutes of watching and asking questions he arose and approached my desk.  Visions of packing my things and heading out the door were running through my brain.  Instead, he said, “Good job! The students seem to be learning and having a good time” or words to that effect.  What a relief!

The first few weeks flew by and it came time to assess the students on their learning (and my teaching).  I sat down and prepared what I thought was a great unit test. It had about 75 multiple-choice questions, a small list of 10-15 definitions and several essays.  The test was a compilation of my memories of the tests I took in high school and some of my college tests.  The students had about 40 minutes to write all the answers and I could tell immediately there was trouble.  If my classes at Cortland had mentioned the reading and writing capabilities of 7th graders, I must have entirely forgotten them.  No student that I can remember finished the test in the class period so I extended the test over two days.  I went to colleagues and showed them the test and wondered why my students had such a hard time.  That was a great lesson from my fellow teachers.  I was advised to make my next test much shorter, compact and one nearly all the students could complete within the class period.

I was not finished with assessment problems.  As the first grading period drew to a close, I opened my grade book and I had basically 4 test grades for the whole grading period and that was it.  The first test had dragged almost all the students’ scores down and there were few As for the entire grading period.  Again, I went to Don and Ethel and admitted that I might have done something wrong. “Where are the homework grades?”  “What other types of formative assessment did you track?”  There weren’t any other grades because there wasn’t any other work.  I was in ‘college mode’ and college classes had midterms and finals and usually a paper or two during the semester.  I changed my assessment practices immediately and switched to almost daily formal and informal methods of assessment thereby creating a clearer picture of my students’ learning and my teaching. Another great lesson learned by the rookie.

My first year was also a learning experience for the non-classroom duties of teachers.  As a rookie I took over the Historians Club.  Previous years’ clubs featured trips to places like Washington, D.C. or other historical locations in New York State.  A huge part of my duties, besides after school club meetings, was a fund-raiser.  The students listened to a pitch by a fund-raising salesperson and decided that candy bars would sell well and raise money to make a trip somewhere.  Selling candy meant 7th graders protecting their cardboard boxes full of candy bars against theft and careful accounting of money, as well as collecting the money and controlling the flow of candy bars by the advisor.  I had absolutely no preparation and very few organizational skills for this type of venture.  I know my club members had more experience than I did and they helped me through the process with just a few ‘bumps and bruises’.  We didn’t raise much money and our “trip” amounted to a bus ride to Auburn about 15 miles away.  We visited the Seward Mansion, had a meal and watched a movie at the local theater.  Not exactly a trip to Ft. Ticonderoga or our nation’s capital.  That was my first and last year as Historians Club advisor, but not my last time raising money at school.

Mid-way through October the high school principal walked into my classroom after school one day.  School let out around 2:45 in the afternoon and I typically spent two hours after school each day grading papers and preparing for the next day’s lessons.  He said he noticed I was always after school and he asked me if I would like to earn some extra money.  Since my total income was about $8,000 for the year I said I was interested.  He asked me if I had any cheerleading experience and I know I must have laughed.  No problem, but no training to lead a bunch of girls during basketball season.  About all I knew was a little bit about projecting my voice from my time in the college choir.  I worked out a deal with the principal and the high school basketball coach that I could sit behind the boys’ basketball teams during the games.  I am sure the girls appreciated not having me around during the games listening to what they were saying about the game or their boyfriends.

My biggest challenge was an incident that occurred during a game with Moravia.  The referees were not as observant as they might have been with what was happening under the baskets.  Elbows were being thrown and tempers were flaring.  Suddenly one of the players from Moravia turned and punched one of our team captains in the face.  Gary was shaken but he did not retaliate.  He didn’t have time.  His girlfriend, and head cheerleader, Kim, sprang off the stands, ran out in the middle of the court and planted her shoe right in the Moravia player’s rear end.  The player turned, cocked his fist, probably figuring it was Gary.  Luckily, I followed Kim out on the court and stepped between her and the basketball player.  He looked like he didn’t care to punch me, the refs stopped the game and things got under control.

I remember in the aftermath that Kim was upset that she had to write a letter of apology to the player.  She almost refused to do it because she thought she was in the right to protect her boyfriend.  I know the letter was stiffly written and probably did not convey a true sense of being sorry for what she did.

My classroom the first year was diagonally across the hall from the restrooms.  At that time in the 1970s there was a problem with students smoking in the restrooms and the stalls were a good place to hide and ditch a cigarette if a teacher happened to smell smoke in the hallway.  The smokers were really good about hiding and not being caught so the administration decided to take down the stalls around the toilets.  On top of that I was appointed “permanent latrine officer” by the principal.  During passing periods I was instructed to stand in the restrooms to make sure no one was smoking.  I am sure that some students were constipated because one of their teachers was watching them on the “john”.  I was able to get my classroom assignment changed for the last 3 years to a place down the hall next to Ethel and Don and thereby relieve myself of bathroom surveillance duties.  Without their support and experience the beginning and future of my teaching career would have been very different.  They were kind, patient and more than willing to share their abundant experience and resources.

My first year was exhausting.  I recall grading into the night, typing and making numerous mistakes on everything from hand-outs to tests, re-working lessons that I thought were fantastic, only to have all that time and effort bomb in the classroom.  I learned that I had students from homes with two college-educated parents and homes where the parents had a basic high school education.  Some students could read at a high school level and some were still at the grade school level.  The multi-text approach taken by the Junior High Social Studies department meant that students were not able to have a textbook at home, unless they checked them out, which most of them didn’t, and that the texts were, in some cases, over 10 years old.  I know at the end of the school year I slept 12 hours a day for the first three days that the semester was over.

The good thing is that now I had a plan, had some idea of who constituted the community population and how I might best structure my teaching to fit the students’ needs.  I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a great teacher.  I made some good connections with some of the students, their parents and the other faculty at Southern Cayuga Central Junior-Senior High School.  My evaluations were acceptable and I was not in peril of being released.

The next three years at Southern Cayuga flew by.  I coached the junior high baseball team and we won the league championship one year.  My last year I coached the freshmen baseball team.  For two years, after coaching the cheerleading squad, I coached freshmen boys’ basketball.  I enjoyed teaching the basic fundamentals of those sports and the interaction I had with students outside of the classroom.  Teaching became much easier.  I was still putting in long hours but I became more and more familiar with the content and how to teach it.

As for the content, I was assigned to teach 7th grade Social Studies which consisted of New York State geography and history, early U.S. history and the history of the Iroquois Confederacy.  I was also assigned two sections of English/Language Arts.  One section was for students with some reading problems and for that section I used a reading book geared towards students about a grade or two lower than 7th grade.  In New York State at that time a teacher could teach one course out of their certification area.  My specific preparation for teaching ELA was English 101 at Cortland.  I had no idea what I was doing, but I had very understanding colleagues who did.  Interestingly, my assessment for the two English classes was much more thorough, including multiple homework assignments and many in-class assignments that both formatively and summatively assessed my students’ progress and my teaching. Looking back on the difference in assessment between my Social Studies classes and my English classes I think since I had taken so many history classes in college and was familiar with the assessment format I had been programmed for that kind of model. Since I had no similar experience with English courses I used my memory from high school coursework and put that model into play.  In both cases I do not think I put any of my students into permanent jeopardy and after my first year my colleagues seemed to support the idea that I knew what I was doing.

While in New York I was a member of the National Education Association and then the New York State United Teachers, AFL-CIO.  I had a ‘union’ card.  We had contract problems and went without a contract at Southern Cayuga for 15 months.  The teachers decided on a “work to rule” action since we were told across the negotiating table that “teachers only work a certain amount of time and so they are only worth so much money”.  “Work to rule” meant that we fulfilled the contract and only worked the hours dictated by our contract, basically a half hour before and after the students showed up to campus.  As any teacher will tell you good teachers spend multiple hours outside the classroom in grading and lesson preparation, and that does not count professional development and self-improvement through reading in the content and pedagogical area.  When that action seemed to have no impact on negotiations, we added picketing.  The school superintendent told us that there was no way career teachers would join the picket line.  You know, the 30 plus year elementary school teachers who would rather die than do anything to harm their students.  The local newspaper took photos of those teachers with picket signs in front of the junior-senior high school building marching along the public road.  Contract resolved!

There was a personal incident during our labor negotiations that I later found out earned the respect of the superintendent.  All untenured teachers were brought into the office for a “chat” with the administration.  In my case it was the high school principal and the junior high principal.  As I entered the high school principal’s office, I noticed a chair set slightly forward of two chairs set on either side.  I was invited to sit in the middle chair.  Through my study of history and law enforcement I realized this set-up was designed to create unease since the middle person would never be able to make eye contact with either of the other two people at the same time.  Luckily there was room behind the middle chair so I simply moved it back and that changed the dynamics of the “chat”.  It became clear that this meeting was a threat to me and all the other untenured teachers.  Untenured teachers, no matter what state in which they teach have very little recourse to legal protection in the form of due process for contract termination.  Very quickly the high school principal told me that I might be released for my actions in supporting the teachers’ association and, furthermore, no district would hire me in the future for my participation any work action.  To me this sounded like “blacklisting” and I said as much.  The principal went further and said it might be difficult to find work anywhere of any kind.  I was not able to receive that statement without a response.  I knew the principal outside of the school from the local church I attended.  In my second year I started that church’s youth group.  We had monthly meetings and performed some community service projects.  I also was the Director of Christian Education for the church.  I turned to the principal and said to him that he knew my character and my ability and asked if he would give me a reference if my time at Southern Cayuga ended.  He did not directly answer me, but I could tell from his body language that he was in a moral dilemma between his orders from the superintendent to bring the untenured teachers into line and the principal’s own standards of conduct toward another person.  I did not stop there. I said that I had earned more money in my summer job working on an assembly line than I did teaching and I told both principals that the only way they would prevent me from working in the future would be to cut off my hands and as I said this, I thrust my hands out in front of them, almost willing them to cut my hands off.

At that point the meeting was over.  I was seething and beyond being afraid for my job.  The next day my department chair called me into his room.  I had no idea what he was going to say to me, but since he was also a member of the administration, I thought I would get another warning.  As I entered his room, he had a whimsical smile on his face.  He offered me a chair and then looked me in the eye and said, “Did you really tell them to cut off your hands?”  I admitted that I had.  In a different way and in different words, he said, “that took guts”.  That same year I was up for tenure.  There was a contingent amongst the school board that wanted to release me.  The deciding argument in favor of my tenure came from the superintendent.  I never found out what he said in my defense.

The economic well-being of my family in my time in New York was a problem.  My wife graduated in December of my second year of teaching with a degree in Elementary Social Studies and was immediately hired to be a reading teacher by Southern Cayuga at King Ferry Elementary School. That added to our overall income but soon we decided to start a family and her job came to a halt the next summer when our son was born.  The thought at that time that she would go back to work and we would put our child into daycare or with a sitter was just not in our universe.  My income was definitely not keeping up with inflation in the mid-1970s and I seriously considered quitting teaching in order to make more money for my family.  At one low point Sue and I ate potato soup for three days because we were out of money to buy food.  We did not have credit cards and were not going to ask our parents for a short-term loan.  We had a car payment I was paying for graduate hours towards a Master’s in Education and paying back student loans.  To complicate matters the “Rust Belt” economy was hitting upstate New York and the population was diminishing.  The grade school teachers talked about declining enrollment and it became obvious that the junior high school would not need as many teachers in a few years.  RIF=reduction in force. Faced with the potential of being laid off (something my father experienced multiple times in his career at the television plant as a department supervisor) I began to look elsewhere, anywhere, for employment.  Other school districts were facing the same problems in upstate New York and despite several attempts at finding work at a new school the situation looked bad.

In the summer of 1976, we helped Sue’s parents move to a farm in Kansas.  My only connection to Kansas was watching the “Wizard of Oz” and our first trip there did very little to change my view of the Great Plains.  It was very hot and windy, smelled of refinery fumes from two refineries in El Dorado and nowhere did it register in my mind that I wanted to move my family there.

We went to visit Sue’s parents during Spring Break and I was increasingly concerned about a looming lay-off with no promising options in New York. I took some time during our visit to inquire about job openings anywhere.  I met with the local Department of Public Safety in El Dorado, Kansas and was eventually offered a job there as a police officer.  I dropped into Circle High School and asked for a tour of the school, just out of curiosity about schools outside of New York.  After a half hour tour of the building by one of the teachers I stopped into the superintendent’s office to thank him for the tour and he invited me to chat for a few minutes.  We had a nice talk and a few minutes later he asked if I would wait a little while to talk to the high school principal and the high school athletic director.  They came to the office and we talked about another half hour. Then the superintendent asked me if I would step outside of his office for a few minutes.  I knew something was up but I guess I was little dense at that point.  A few minutes later the superintendent invited me back into his office and offered me a job teaching history and government and coaching football and baseball.  I turned down the head football job, accepted a football assistant coach’s position, but quickly agreed to the varsity baseball coaching job.  Now to tell my wife, her parents and, more ominously, my parents and family in New York that our new home was Kansas.  Sue’s parents were happy. They had their daughter and new grandson close as well as their son-in-law.  The New York family was distraught.  “How could you do this?”  “Why would you ditch us in favor of Sue’s family and the “wild west”?”  “Don’t you know that tornadoes constantly killed people and that rattlesnakes loomed around every corner?”  (Ok, we did witness an F-5 tornado from our side yard in 1991 that killed over 20 people just a few miles west of us and I did kill a rattlesnake in my front yard once.)

In July of 1977 we moved to Kansas.  The plan was to live on the Plains for two years and then jobs would open up back in New York and we would head back East.  We did eventually move, 24 years later.  In the meantime, we rented a small farmhouse from one of the school board members, Richard Chase, and that summer and the next few summers I helped on his farm with haying season and some work on fences.  Mr. Chase was a little skeptical of a New Yorker knowing his way around farm equipment but once he saw that I knew how to hold a hay hook and I could pitch a hay bale he knew I wasn’t a “city slicker”.  The Chase family provided a good grounding in the culture of the area and the school district.  They were generous with their time and good will as we learned about living in a new state.

As soon as I could that summer, I re-introduced myself to the administration and got to work planning for the upcoming school year.  I got an early introduction to some of my students based on my coaching job as assistant varsity football coach.  I was familiar with teaching U.S. history but it became evident before the school year started that I was not going to teach that subject.  Instead, I was going to teach a senior level U.S. Government class and an introductory class for freshmen that was a kind of an ethics and positive study habits course.  In both cases I had no experience with the content or the grade level.  My students tested my discipline and my patience, while at the same time trying to figure out if someone from New York came from a different planet.  After all, I did have a funny accent, which provided much humor for them.  “Say, ‘pen’ again, Mr. Cooley.”  Actually, an upstate New York accent has more in common with a Wisconsin accent and is nothing remotely similar to a New York City accent.

In my first year I had two young mothers in my classroom, with their babies.  They explained to me that at times their daycare might fall through and if I wouldn’t allow them to bring their children into my class then they would have to stay home that day.  I did not want them to miss out on their education so a few times we had very young students in Government class.  Years later a young student walked up to me in the beginning of her freshman year and said, “Mr. Cooley, I was a member of your class when I was a baby.”

Teenage pregnancy was, and is, an ever-present situation and in the course of teaching my Government class about Supreme Court cases we studied Roe v. Wade.  I decided to bring the debate to my students by inviting two representatives from either side of the debate into my classes.  After some research I found a nurse at one of the Catholic hospitals in Wichita as a representative for the “Pro Life” side of the debate and a member of Planned Parenthood to represent the “Pro Choice” side.  They agreed to speak about the case and the issue of teenage pregnancy to my combined classes.  I needed the auditorium to combine my classes and permission from the principal to take all of my students out of their classes for this afternoon event.  I prepared the paperwork and my lesson plan for his approval and, in his haste, he signed off on the class without knowing the repercussions.  The class went fine. The two women were cordial in their disagreement on the issues. My students asked great questions that hedged on the edge of their personal lives and almost as soon as school was out that day the principal’s phone started to ring with unhappy parents.  I was called into the office and asked, “Why in the world did you think this was a good idea?”  Beyond the fact that there was an obvious need for information and a civil discussion of the issue, I pointed out the principal’s signature on my paperwork. I was warned not to attempt anything like that again.

Football season was heartache.  The culture of the school’s athletic program was much different from my experience in New York.  The high school from which I graduated had one of the best football programs of its size in the state.  The basketball team was at the top of the conference almost every year while I was in school and as much as high school age students can be, the athletes were dedicated and hard working.  We had players who went on to play college athletics at various levels and they came back in the summer to act as role models.  Southern Cayuga had a very successful soccer and basketball program, as well as very competitive tennis, swimming and baseball programs.  On the other hand, Circle High School football had suffered through three years of not winning a game.  The players had talent and had come close to winning but lacked that edge that a winning atmosphere provided.  We played some close games that first year, won one and had the last one in our pocket when a single play changed the outcome to a loss.  I was crushed and nearly inconsolable.  I moved my family halfway across the country, created a real divide between my New York family and me, only to end up with a losing season.  My focus was not on my teaching, which was going well, it was on my personal pride.  I felt bad for my players but worse for myself and that was wrong.  After the game I closed the door to the training room and let out all my feelings and frustrations.  I think I gave the whirlpool bath a few new dents with my foot.  Several players attempted to make me feel better but I had failed.  That incident and those feelings helped me to redirect my focus back to what really matters in teaching, the students.  As bad as I felt I am sure many of the players felt worse than I did.  No matter what kind of day I was going to have in the classroom there would always be a student who would probably have a concern or challenge greater than mine.

My classroom was a different matter.  Besides the interest in my accent my students were interested in the content and the reasons for learning about their government.  I had great interactions with what proved to be eager learners.  I found out that my college preparation in terms of the content was sufficient in providing the tools for success.  I am still in contact, through Facebook, with several of the students from my first year at Circle High School.

After the first football season was over, I had the time to attend a Circle NEA meeting at one of the elementary schools. The teachers were interested in my background and I pulled my New York union card out of my wallet.  The reaction was easy to read…I must be one of the eastern liberal agitators!  Three years later I was elected president of the teachers’ association and for 9 years I was on the teachers’ negotiating team.  We still had contract problems at times, but the overall atmosphere in Kansas and in our district was much more friendly and professional than it was at Southern Cayuga. I am still not sure what created the hostile negotiating atmosphere in New York.  Most teachers focused on the hardline attitude of the superintendent.  The worsening economy and the large number of unemployed teacher graduates may have lent some background to the problem. With a large pool to choose from, maybe “a dime a dozen” (phrase used during contract negotiations by the administration’s negotiator) had some credence.  I think a large part of the change in atmosphere was the relationship between the administration and the teachers.  I cannot remember any person involved with administration at Circle ever making a comment like that.

Despite a lower cost of living in Kansas and a salary equivalent to what I was making in New York, my family still struggled economically.  The first summer we were there Sue took a job as a waitress at the Pizza Hut in El Dorado and sometimes she took a calculator to the grocery store to total up her purchases as she shopped so she could stop buying things when she ran out of her budget.  We did not have to eat potato soup for three days in a row, but we had a large garden, a chest freezer and Sue canned what we could not immediately eat.  Like many teachers I had numerous summer jobs and I did not turn down any opportunity to make extra money at school.  One year I got up at 4:30 every morning to drive the bus picking up freshmen boys for their 6 AM basketball practice.  I also drove the game bus and kept score at home and away games for basketball season.  One summer I mowed all the lawns for the school district and it happened to be a summer when there was an abundance of rain so I was constantly mowing and still not keeping up with the grass.  I painted houses one summer with another teacher.

At the same time, I continued my post-graduate education.  Continuing teacher certification standards were much different in Kansas.  In New York in the mid-1970s I had to have the equivalent of my master’s degree within five years after graduating with my bachelor’s degree.  In Kansas I needed 8 hours every six years, and at that time in the late 1970s and early 1980s those hours could be anything that applied to my teaching or coaching.  I took some course work that the state required, like “Teaching Reading in the Content Area” and I took courses that would help me in my content area.  I started a Master’s in Administration but after a few courses I decided I wanted to stay in the classroom.  It seemed like a large part of every administrator’s life was taken up with dealing with “problem children” and even with the promise of an increased salary that was not a career path I wanted to follow.  After drifting through several years of coursework my patient wife suggested I actually commit to a program of study so I started my Master’s in History at Wichita State University.  This commitment meant that after teaching all day, and in some seasons, coaching after school, I headed over to Wichita State for a three-hour evening class or in the summer time attending classes and then reading and writing for large chunks of time.  I was awarded with my Master’s in 1989.  Basically, I had enough credit hours through my “drifting” and commitment to maintain certification for several years.

In 1993 I was fortunate to be selected as a participant in a National Endowment for the Humanities five-week summer seminar on the Enlightenment philosophers’ influence on the Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution.  Along with 29 other teachers from across the United States, we gathered at the College of the Holy Cross, read many articles and a long reading list, attended lectures given by some the experts in the field and engaged in long discussions about the information and teaching in general.  During this seminar one of the professors, Dr. Marie Cleary, asked about my future plans.  I had not given much thought about my future.  I had a Master’s, a job I loved and a school district and a community I enjoyed.  Marie asked if I had given thought to continuing on to doctoral work. I had not.  I had two children that would be attending college in the near future and the expense for their educations alone was daunting.  I also was under the impression that I would need to leave my high school teaching job to attend a university full time if I pursued doctoral work.  Marie told me there were programs where I might fulfill the “residency” requirement by full time summer course work. She was correct and that is how I ended up at Kansas State University in the fall of 1996.

There was a delay to the beginning of my doctoral work.  In the fall of 1996 Senator Nancy Kassebaum announced that she was retiring from the United States Senate.  U.S. Senators and their responsibilities were always a part of my curriculum in my high school government class so I knew much about her and her father, Alf Landon, the former governor and Presidential candidate in 1936.  I had the opportunity to meet Senator Kassebaum due to the fact that in 1993 my school district nominated me for “State Teacher of the Year”.  At a ceremony in Wichita, I had a brief conversation with Senator Kassebaum and we had a photo taken together.  I did not win the award, although I was nominated two more times.

When she announced her retirement I was saddened.  Senator Kassebaum reminded me of another famous Kansan, one whom I admired since I was young, Dwight David Eisenhower.  They both shared the willingness to do the right thing, even if it did not agree with their party’s policies or campaign promises.  Senator Kassebaum did not even vote with her party’s majority in many cases and even though I did not agree with her votes at times I always knew that she was doing what she considered to be right for the people of Kansas.  I was chagrined to find out almost immediately after her retirement announcement a local Wichita politician with, in my mind, dubious political background and experience, announced his candidacy for her office.  He appeared to me to be the other end of spectrum concerning character and political philosophy from that of Senator Kassebaum.  After a few weeks of mulling over the situation, and discussion with my wife, I wrote a letter to Senator Kassebaum. I spent over a page and half thanking her for her years of experience representing the state’s citizens and then at the very end of the letter I asked her what she thought about me running for her position in the Senate.  I never expected an answer.  About a month later, the day after the State of the Union Address our phone rang.  I was busy in another area of the house and Sue answered it. She said it was for me and I asked her to take a message and I would call back.  Sue said I needed to take the call now.  It was Senator Kassebaum.  She apologized for not calling me more quickly and said she almost called the previous evening but she was busy in the U.S. Capitol, listening to the President deliver the State of the Union message.  We had a conversation lasting 15 or 20 minutes and in that amount of time she warned me that if I became a “legitimate” candidate, meaning I became a contender, not just a candidate, me and my family could be under attack by the forces of other contenders.  She said I should seriously consider those consequences.  After discussing her conversation with my family and extended family, plus a few friends, I decided to “throw my hat in the ring”.  The rest of the story is material for another book.  I did not win but I did learn much about politics and the people of Kansas, as did my high school students.

I started my doctoral degree in the fall of 1996 by taking a statistics course at Wichita State.  I took another education course on multi-cultural diversity and then started my coursework at Kansas State University.  Over the next few years I would take 9 credits hours in the summertime and pick up courses during the school year.  My school administration helped out a few times by scheduling my preparation period the last period of the day so that I might make the two and three-quarter hour drive to Manhattan and make late afternoon and early evening classes.  In the summertime I rented a basement apartment about seven blocks east of campus and most days I walked to classes and the library.  In the fall of 2000, still a year away from writing my dissertation, Grand Valley State asked if I would like to apply for a position in their History Department, primarily working with future teachers and teaching methods classes as well as observing teacher-candidates in area classrooms.  I started the application process but realized that it would be impossible to complete my coursework, write my dissertation and adjust to a new job at a new school at the same time.  The next year rolled around, my dissertation was in process, my coursework was completed and in November 2000 I interviewed for the position at Grand Valley State.  I was hired and submitted my resignation to Circle High School in the early part of the Spring semester.

Grand Valley State’s teacher preparation program reminded me of the Cortland State program in that students at GVSU are required to have a content major before they enter the College of Education.  Until recently GVSU also required a “teachable minor”.  Due to more rigorous certification requirements and a desire by the History Department that our students are more deeply seated with the content they will be certified to teach the Social Studies program now features more coursework in geography, political science and economics.  Students may still decide on a minor but that requires even more credit hours for graduation and would extend their time at the university for at least one more semester, if not, more.  Unless the students take overloads during the regular semesters or courses during the spring and summer sessions it normally takes five years to complete the program.  For more than a few of our “first gen” students it takes longer than that because they have to maintain outside jobs in order to stay in school and not incur a huge debt load.

For 18 years I taught several courses at GVSU.  The whole experience has capped off my teaching career.  I think I have been helpful to the many students who have taken classes from me and had me observe them practice teaching.  A few of them have not gone into teaching and like I told my classes many times, that is a good outcome, in some cases.  Better to realize that this career might not be the best one for you, than to suffer in a challenging career that might also cause your students to suffer.  As for the many graduates who are teaching, I hope the stories I share create some shared moments of reflection in both positive and negative ways.  It is good to remember both the good and the bad times.  The good times fill us with renewed joy and sense of purpose. The bad times help us to gird ourselves for even greater challenges and sharpen our sense of commitment to our profession.