Humility: A Personal History (Part Seven)

Re: Teaching

I had  no plans to be a teacher, really—did not want to be a teacher. Yes, I'd earned my teacher certification at Hiram College, but that, in my mind (though not in the minds of my parents), was a fallback plan. Just in case.

I'd applied to grad school at the University of Kansas and had been accepted into their American Studies program (lit, history, the arts, etc.). Good news: I was accepted!

Bad news: no financial aid.

So ... I fell back.

I applied for two teaching jobs: one in nearby Garrettsville, Ohio, where my mom had taught for ten years and now, her Ph,D. completed, was heading to Iowa to teach at Drake University with my dad.

The other: at the Aurora Public Schools in Aurora, Ohio—just eleven miles from Hiram.

I took the first job offered: the Aurora Middle School—even though my supervising teacher during my student teaching (West Geauga HS) had warned me: "Whatever you do, don't get stuck in a middle school!"

Oh well.

And "stuck" I was—for about thirty years. 

The problem was that I loved it there.

True, I left for four years in the late 1970s. I'd completed my Ph. D. (as Joyce had) at Kent State, and we had accepted jobs at Lake Forest College, up the North Shore a bit from Chicago.

I thought I'd like college teaching.

I didn't. 

I missed the middle school kids, missed my colleagues, so I resigned after only one year and headed back to Ohio, but Aurora had no openings.

So ... Joyce and I both took positions at Western Reserve Academy, where I taught for two years (Joyce for 10). Our son would graduate from the school in 1990, whereupon Joyce would head off to teach (with great distinction) the rest of her career at ... Hiram College.

I left WRA after two years (a salary snit), thinking I would quickly find another job. I didn’t.

So I ended up working part time at Kent State (frosh English—our son is now teaching frosh English at the U of Akron!) and part time at the local book store, The Learned Owl.

In the spring of that year, over at the KSU Library, I ran into former Aurora colleague Denny Reiser, who told me there was an English opening at the middle school.

I made a couple of calls, applied for the job, and after a resounding vote of approval from the Board of Education (3-2: I’d made some enemies), was rehired for the fall of 1982, and there I stayed until January of 1997, when I retired.

TO BE CONTINUED ...