Choosing Education:
an Historical Analysis
In the beginning when my parents could finally get me out
from under foot and into school, I joined my dad at Harvard. He
was in the MBA program and I was in the Harvard nursery school.
It was all down hill after that.
Upon my graduation from Harvard, my family moved to West
Hartford, Connecticut. I was enrolled in some prestigious school
with a long driveway that led to a magnificent building. When I
see a World War II movie of Germans working out of some chateau,
I see this building. I remember they had a slide, the students
used to enter the classroom. I tried to go down it a second
time, but was told only once a day. I walked out of that school
and walked home. I remember my mom was furious at the school and
not at me. As far as I was concerned, I escaped, I snuck out, I
as proud of myself. Now upon reflection as a teacher, I
understand her anger at the school. I went to another school.
Our next move found us in Westport, Connecticut. Dad was
working on Madison Avenue and teaching nights and my mom was
teaching full time. I went to a public elementary school. I
walked to school and found plenty of mischievous things to do
with my new found buddies. I had my first fight over a girl in
first grade. After the fight and both sets of parents were
called in, Ricky and I became best friends. The girl, I can't
remember her name was forgotten about very quickly. Ricky and I
got into trouble all the time, in school and out of school. In
second grade Ricky and I were separated. That meant we were only
in trouble out of school. I remember only one thing from second
grade: our female gym teacher used to stand by the shower room
and watch us shower. I remember not liking that. Now upon
reflection, I realize my instincts were correct. Third grade was
the year I hit rock bottom. The first thing I remember was being
pulled out of class and going to work with a lady in a separate
room. Today we might call it resource room. We worked on
reading and answering questions, on writing, and she asked me
lots of questions. I especially remember her working on my
writing and giving me writing exercises to take home. I was the
only kid pulled out of class for this and it made me feel weird.
I was different and it wasn't a good different. Or at least that
wasn't my feeling on it. My teacher was new, I remember her
looking like my babysitter who was in high school. She was
strict. If a student spoke out in class, that student had to
write 50 times, I will not speak out in class. Well I don't want
to tell you how many times I had to write that phrase or one
similar to it. Usually these exercises were done after school.
However, on one occasion I had to take the exercise home because
I had to write it 1000 times. When I first saw "The Simpsons" I
had to laugh. Bart became my favorite character. If all of this
wasn't bad enough, the worst event of my life, to date, happened
in this class. It happened on Valentine's Day. I had a crush on
a classmate and wrote her a love note, which I passed to her in
class. Well, Ms Acorn, the teacher, intercepted it and read it.
She laughed and then read it outloud to the class. Bart Simpson
couldn't have devised a more cruel method of death then the one
going through my mind then. I was devastated. One particular
young man named Wynn Headley was particularly cruel. He was also
the biggest kid in class. He later went on to be a local high
school football star. Well, in pure self-destruct mode I taunted
him with name calling: Wynn "Headless". Well he was sensitive to
his intelligence and used to wait after school to beat me up. It
was an adventure to get home unscathed each day.
Educationally speaking nothing was happening. My parents
pulled me out and sent me to a private school a couple of towns
away. It was a new start. My fourth grade teacher was the
oldest thing I had ever seen. I heard my first dirty joke in her
class. I kissed my first girl in the coat closet of her class.
This is the first class for which I can remember doing work. I
did a report on the Connecticut River. This was great. Our
family made a holiday of it. We took a trip along the river from
Old Saybrook, Connecticut up to Hanover, New Hampshire. I took
pictures all the way, and gathered information about the river at
visitor centers and information booths. When we got home, I
remember spending days on assembling the report. I pasted the
pictures and brochures into the report. The teacher praised me
and posted my report on the class wall. That was the beginning
of the best year of schooling I had to date. It was the first
time a teacher rewarded me and the first time I felt successful.
This carried over to sports too. I was a star on the football
and baseball team and I as the only fourth grader playing on any
varsity sport and I was on two. The school only went up to sixth
grade. Sports became my outlet for success. This was the first
of three very happy and successful years. During this time we
moved to another house in Westport. Instead of sending me to
another private school, my parents decided I should go back to
public school. Trouble began immediately upon entering a public
junior high. Trouble, of course, came in the form of a female.
She was no ordinary female as I was to find out later. She
stopped seeing someone else. He was not happy, and we fought
after school. No one won, but she became my first wife a number
of years later. Her name was Joy. In junior high, I took up
with the hoods, went to the YMCA pool hall and became a hustler.
Since both my parents were teaching nights, I played pool every
night. At 9 pm the phone would ring in the pool hall. I didn't
wait to get the message, I put up my stick, grabbed my books and
sweater and walked out hearing whoever answered the phone, "Teddy
has just left, Mrs Nellen." That was the year they brought "new
math" into the schools, I had an English teacher who sprayed when
he spoke, we used headphones in a new French lab, I loved
mechanical drawing and shop, and hated gym in spite of my
previous successes in my previous school, and science. Eighth
grade was a washout. I was identified as a problem and was
ignored. I wore the same sweater to school every day all year.
I was now getting in trouble with the police. It was time for me
to skip town. My parents hated this "new math" thing. I was
sent to boarding school for the next five years. My first year
was great probably because I repeated eigth grade. I was on the
honor roll the entire spring term. I was popular, I did well in
sports. Things changed the next year. One incident destroyed the
rest of my time at that school. At the end of the year I
received the most votes from my classmates to be a member of the
student council. The faculty, however, denied me that victory,
because they didn't think my grades were good enough and I was
spending too much time is detention. This was devastating. As I
look back on it, that honor may have been the very thing to turn
me around. Instead I slept through the rest of the years until
graduation. I am proud to say, I graduated last in a class of
125. Since I knew I would probably flunk out of college, I
joined the Army, went to Vietnam and educated myself. When I
came back I went to Babson for my freshman year, finished first
in the class and got married to Joy and transferred to Skidmore
College where I graduated with honors.
It must seem obvious why I became a teacher. I was
determined that I would not let happen to me happen to another
kid, if I could help it. I was damn mad about my own education
and the only way I could fix it was to get into it and fix it
from within. I went back and eventually taught at the school
from which I graduated last in my class. Teaching with my old
teachers was scary. So scary I left, but this time on better
footing. I also divorced Joy and came to NYC and started
teaching in a public high school. The wrongs done me gave me
great insight into my students needs. The successes I had had
gave me methods to replicate success in others. I didn't learn
in schools, I learned outside schools. I don't teach in a
traditional manner. All of my academic successes were
"constructivist" in nature, though no one called it that. I
preferred the Dewey phrase, "Learn by doing." Public school has
afforded me the opportunity, the material, the students to ply my
craft and play out my vision. I do not teach as I was taught. I
am that old lady I had in fourth grade, my prep school Latin
teacher, my college English teacher, my Vietnam corresponding
teacher. Why am I a teacher? It seems obvious to me, I've got
to show them how to do it. Why do I want to be an administrator?
Because I have a vision and a way to do a better job, and I have
honed some skills. I want to fulfill John Cheever's vision of
me. In my first year of teaching, my wife, Joy, and I were
having dinner out when she saw an old English teacher of hers,
Mary Cheever. When we went over to say hello, Mary introduced us
to her husband, John. Well I was overwhelmed since I has just
finished Falconer, his latest novel. In fact they were staying
in this particular hotel for the week while he autographed
thousands of copies of this book. He asked me if I played
Backgammon. I did and he invited me to join him everyday at 1 pm
for two hours of play. I was honored and accepted. During our
last session, after days of conversation and talk of education,
he said to me, "I see you as a headmaster or principal of an
innovative school doing wonderful things." I laughed, thanked
him and told him, I had no desire to head a school. He laughed
and I left. And now here I am at Teachers College in an
administrative program hoping to make a difference.