Those Who Can't DO ...

Another school year's about to start--without me. And it still feels strange, even though I retired from public schools in January 1997, from Western Reserve Academy in June 2011. For the latter, that's eight years ago, the difference between being a fourth grader and a high-school senior. Geez.

I started teaching seventh graders at the Aurora Middle School (Aurora, Ohio) in the 1966-67 school year. Fifty-three years ago. (Soon, even the arithmetic will be beyond me!) I was twenty-one years old, scared, vastly ignorant about this voyage on which I had embarked.

And then one day I looked up, and we were returning to port, and I had taught thirty years. Go figure.

Last night--for some reason--I started thinking about that old bromide: Those who can't do teach. You know, if you're not good enough to play in a symphony orchestra, you teach music. If you're not good enough to write a novel, you teach English. And on and on.

It's a cliche that has always bothered me, for in my career I have known some supremely talented people who were teaching because they wanted to. Because it was their gift. And they wanted to share it. Throughout my career, I learned as much as I could from those people--stole what I could from them. They initially helped me survive (my first year I had 200 students, three different preparations), then helped me to love my job with a profound intensity.

Later on, I heard a version of that those-who-can't do expression: Those who can't teach, teach teachers.

Of course, there's some truth in that one, too. In my graduate school courses in education, I had profs who wouldn't have lasted five minutes in a middle school classroom. But others--like some of my own colleagues--were wonders. And I learned from them--and stole from them.

And in my pre-slumber mode last night, I imagined other forms of the saying:

• Those who can't teach teachers become administrators.
• Those who can't become administrators become state officials.
• Those who can't do any of the above become U. S. Secretary of Education

And on and on we go ...

In recent weeks I've seen families buying school supplies in Office Depot; my younger grandson showed me a pic of the new backpack and shoes he's got for school; I've seen buses on their practice runs; in front of school buildings I've read the Welcome Back! signs; in the coffee shop I've seen teachers planning and getting ready ...

All of it whirls me back to my own teaching career, of course. The trips to the office-supply stores, the purchase of new slacks and shirts, the lesson-planning (which I always began the first week in August), the fears, the hopes, the optimism, the wonder--all of this (and more!) has flooded over me in recent days and weeks. And part of me would give anything to walk back into a classroom, to learn new names, to try to sneak my way onto the I-like-this-class list of my students, to start working on play productions, to hear a laugh at a joke (a groan at a pun), to see the looks of surprise, to discover the wonder that lies within each child (sometimes near the surface, sometimes not), to ... you know.

But, of course, I can't. Those days are long gone.

The memories are not--and the heartstrings still vibrate when a school bus rolls by ...