By John Grindrod
Guest Columnist
While many are already back in school, I’m not, as this year marks the 20th anniversary since I last addressed a class of 17-year-olds with the intent to make them better practitioners of the language they inherited at birth.
While my brain in diurnal moments knows that a score is certainly a long time, the daytime brain apparently doesn’t communicate very well with the nocturnal version because I still have vivid dreams that I’m still teaching. I suppose since 27 of my 32 years in education took place amongst the teens of St. Marys Memorial, it’s not surprising that I’m always in the old high school off West South Street, one razed several years ago when the new school opened just north of US 33.
The dreams bear little resemblance to my typical days of yore in Room 16, which were largely both productive and pleasurable, working with lots of very capable students, many of whom earnestly wanted to know what I knew well and also working with fellow educators I both liked and respected. Instead, my dreams which occur usually once or twice a month are filled with curricular chaos. There aren’t enough seats for everyone; I don’t have enough textbooks; I cannot control my class discipline-wise or on a test day; I realize I’ve neglected to make copies of the test. I call them my school-mares, and they remain, unfortunately, a part of my dreaming anthology.
Each year as school begins, I always think about the reason I left at the relatively young age of 54, especially when just three more years would have meant a much higher pension. The reason might best be summed up similarly to Thoreau’s reason why he ceased his experiment in independent living and left the woods surrounding Walden Pond. He said in his magnum opus, Walden, “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare anymore time for that one.”
In the latter stages of my father’s 58 years that were his allotment to do what he could to leave the planet a better place, which he did in spades, I saw a man who had reached a point in his life when he yearned for retirement. In his last couple years, he’d gotten a new boss, one far younger than his old one and someone who wanted to mark his territory, as often is the case when young go-getters finally get to sit in the big chair.
Now, my father had been a very successful steel-and-wire salesman for over 30 years. Just as many of his World War II generation peers, his only education after graduating from high school in Lynn, Massachusetts, was what was provided in the military, from his Parris Island drill sergeant and other COs during his four years in the Marines. However, through his intellect and charisma, he made himself a terrific salesman. So, just a few years away from sweet retirement, he surely didn’t need a young boss making wholesale changes by attempting to reinvent the salesmanship wheel. That may have been what immersed my father in thought on the last Monday of his life in late May of 1978 when, while attempting to traverse a crossbuck railroad track on the outskirts of Oakwood, Ohio, he died. There would never be even the first hearty inhalation of sweet retirement oxygen.
Remembering that and knowing I was young enough and motivated enough to pursue my other lives and find work made my decision easier to leave. On my last day, the secretary called to me as I was walking out of the main office for the final time, saying, “Oh, Mr. Grindrod, you forgot to sign the substitute list for next school year,” something many retiring teachers do. I looked back, smiled and said, “Haley, if I wanted to still be in a classroom, you’d be seeing me on opening day next school year.”
This time of year never passes without some thoughts of my first editor when I started writing for the paper while still teaching. Her name was Diane Pacetti, sadly gone some seven years now far too soon at just 66. Diane wanted a columnist’s classroom voice as the new century began, one I could provide. She was indeed a great mentor, turning someone used to academic writing into someone who could write a pretty decent column or occasional newspaper feature.
Only at this time of year will I revisit educational subject matter, now a score’s worth in the past. After all, I’ve been out of education far too long to render any worthwhile commentary on today’s classroom matters.
To all returning to school to stand before students, treat it as the privilege it is, and to all who look to them for knowledge and guidance, be like sponges.
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
