As I Leave

Paula K. Flemming

This address was presented to the assembled district staff on Teacher Recognition Day,
6/8/2001, as Paula concluded her 27 year career teaching reading at Conval.

I began my teaching career believing I could make a difference.  Soon thereafter I entered a graduate program in the teaching of reading because I had read the statistic that 90% of the prisoners in this country were illiterate.  I thought that if I could teach people to read, ultimately, I'd be helping to empty our prisons.  I don't know if I'm responsible for keeping anyone out of prison, but I have assisted many to learn to read. I've also been fortunate because I've been able to broaden my effect by helping many colleagues to improve their skills of teaching reading.

My wonderful old friend, Donald Murray, in his column "Over 60" which appears in the Boston Globe, said, "Teachers are pragmatic idealists who want a job where they can make a difference."  Teachers who make a difference care. They strive to be excellent teachers and they demand excellence from their students. Teachers present a model of excellence to show students by example that they can meet high standards.  That's teaching at its best. One, or two, or thirty students are succeeding, or will succeed in life because of your standards, your caring, your teaching. It takes only one teacher to make a difference.  Read articles, talk to others.

Almost everyone can cite one teacher who made a difference in his or her life.  For me, it was Mrs. Basile, my high school French and Latin teacher, who worked through her alumni association to get me accepted at Radcliffe.  Mrs. Basile helped uncover my buried talents at translating Latin and conjugating verbs.  She made me see my strengths instead of my perceived weaknesses based on my being nearsighted and coming from a poor, Russian family.  Mrs. Basile gave me a sense that I could achieve.  She was my teacher, my counselor, my adviser, my therapist, all within the fifty-minute period set aside for the study of French.  She taught me how to comport myself in unfamiliar situations. 

My boyfriend Don was about to graduate from Middlebury College with a major in Spanish.  Mrs. Basile advised me as to what I should wear and told me to bring a hostess gift to Senora Centeno, Don's teacher who had made a difference in his life. Senora Centeno was housing me for the weekend.   Remember this was the 50s!  Mrs. Basile made sure we learned the fundamentals of grammar, French pronunciation and how to identify the objective case.  But even more importantly, she taught me the joy one gets in always doing quality work-the best that I could do.  She was a woman of clarity in my age of uncertainty.  Her model of excellence, her demands and her caring made a difference in my life.

I remember one of my teaching situations about fourteen years ago.  Nicki Janulis had invited me to teach poetry to a group of her fourth grade students.  I had planned a lesson on how to read and understand a poem.  I chose John Updike's "Lament for Cocoa".  It is fine poetry written with tight, strong words and it's accessible to fourth graders because of the topic.  I presented a well-crafted lesson in the cafeteria at AES.  The kids paid attention and I could feel their awe as they learned this new strategy of analyzing and coming to comprehend a poem. 

A couple of weeks later Jesse chose "Lament for Cocoa" as his poem to present on Poetry Night.  His choice thrilled me as I assumed he liked this poem as a result of my excellent teaching.  Seven years later as a volunteer usher at the Colonial Theatre in Keene, I was collecting tickets at the door.  Jesse, his friends and his father came to the concert.  Jesse greeted me enthusiastically, hugged me and right there in the lobby, this pimply teenager with baggy pants recited "Lament for Cocoa" to me.  I applauded his performance with tears in my eyes.  Last year Jean Chance told me that Jesse had chosen to recite "Lament for Cocoa" at his graduation ceremony.

It's the little lessons we teach each day that make a difference: speaking to a student about how well crafted her speech was even though she wasn't elected class president; prompting students to show respect to others by offering please and thank you; insisting that students use punctuation in their writings; listening to the tearful tale of a dog's death. 

One teacher can make a difference because she perseveres when the going gets rough whether due to flak from a parent, an administrator, a colleague or the student.  We don't give up. I marvel at the battles some of you have fought concerning teaching methods, building layouts, curriculum, or student placements.  You had nothing personal to gain, but you put yourself on the line because you wanted what was best for your students.  It would have been easy to stop and give in to your opponents, but you continued getting more information, more documentation, expert opinions. You take patient, thoughtful action insisting that you be involved in decisions which affect your students.

My mentor, Tom Newkirk, English professor at UNH, says, "Teachers are long distance runners, undistracted, in for the long haul, not yielding to the crisis mentality which breeds sprinters looking for quick fixes."  You run the marathons because you want what's best for your students. Sandy Banks, a writer at the Los Angeles Times, while helping her seven-year-old with homework said to her, "I'd love to be a teacher." The child took her stubby pencil from her mouth, looked her mother in the eyes and replied, "You know, teachers have to sharpen pencils that have been chewed on."  Sharpening pencils that have been chewed on is a metaphor for all that teachers must do.  Many kids passing through classrooms these days are like those chewed-on pencils in the second grade.  They've been worn down, battered, chewed up by life.  But they're capable underneath it all, in the hands of teachers who can see past the bite marks to the strong lead inside, who don't mind getting spit on their hands, who'll keep working that sharpener again and again.  ("Celebrating teachers who make a difference")

My initial teaching assignment 30 years ago was with the first grade in Winchester, NH.  Fifteen years later I received this note from my pupil Terri.  Mrs. Flemming, Fifteen years ago I was writing my fives backwards and fighting with Donna Curl over who got to sit next to Jeannie Snow.  On May 22^nd I will be graduating from Middlebury College as a Spanish major.  I realize that it is not feasible to ask that you come to the ceremony given a limited number of tickets and the distance involved.  I would like to let you know however, that I have never forgotten your special first grade class or all the time you gave me.  Since a large part of a person's character is formed in the early school years, I realize that I owe a large part of my success to you.  Thank you for being so special.  With fond memories.  Terri

During Terri's tenure in my classroom, I had shared my experiences from having lived in Spain for a year while my husband worked on his Master's degree: children's Spanish building blocks, Christmas traditions, Spanish words for common objects.  Now here Terri was, graduating from Middlebury, my husband's alma mater with my husband's major.  Coincidence or influence?  Sometimes it takes fifteen years to discover that we made a difference in a life.  Sometimes we never find out, but we continue caring and upholding our standards of excellence because we believe in what we do.

Trina, a student of mine seven years ago at the UNH Summer Writing Institute wrote me a note in 1995: Dear Paula, I was recently at a conference in Philadelphia.It was a reflective three-day seminar for mid-career teachers.  At one point during the seminar, the leader asked us to reflect upon teachers who had made a difference to us somewhere along our lives.  None of my elementary or high school teachers popped into my mind.  Instead, you came to mind.  I learned many things about myself, about my writing, and about teaching that summer at UNH.  But what made the greatest impression on me, as a teacher and a learner, was coming to realize that I didn't need the teacher's stamp of approval on my writing to feel successful.  At the beginning of the course, I eagerly awaited your reading of my papers, because you were the teacher.  By the end of the course, I felt more confident in my own assessments and in the comments of my conference group. Now, in my own teaching, I think about what you taught me, and I try to show my students that my stamp of approval is not always the be-all and end-all.           Thank you, and I hope to see you again.  You are a wonderful teacher!  Fondly, Trina.

We do not know where our influence settles.  We need to continue teaching what we believe. I am especially grateful for the optimism new teachers bring to the profession.  I remember an August afternoon five years ago, getting together with some of my older colleagues and lamenting the loss of the ideal students we had years ago.  You remember, the ones who sat quietly at their desks, never spoke out until recognized by the teacher, who said please and thank you.  They wouldn't dream of swearing in our presence or of kicking us. No, their most serious infractions were talking, chewing gum, or getting out of turn in line.

Today, sadly, our discipline problems consist of drug and alcohol abuse, weapons and violence in school, and teen pregnancy, to name just a few. For the past several Octobers I have met with young teachers to support them as they adjusted to teaching in the CVSD.  As I listened to them, I realized that they didn't harbor any negative attitudes towards their students or towards the educational system.  They saw that some of their students had problems, but these young teachers were exploring solutions to help the students to grow intellectually and to become socially responsible.  They saw the lead in their students, and they sharpened their charges by increasing their own teaching skills and expectations.  I left one of those meetings marveling at the way these teachers accepted their students just as I had done thirty years ago.  They were not wishing for a better breed of clients in their classes.  I thank you young people for clearing away the cobwebs that had surreptitiously settled over my eyes. 

Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer and author of Endurance, said, "Optimism is the greatest moral courage."  You new teachers display that great moral courage each day as you enter the building eagerly greeting your students.  It's tempting to think about the good old days, but they are no longer with us. But the Terries, the Jessies, and the Trinas still are.  They need the same level of caring and excellence.  I am especially grateful for you teachers who are continuing who believe you will make a difference.  You have joined my former students in helping me to maintain my optimism about the educational world today and ultimately about the greater world. 

Thank you for your moral courage and for continuing in the places of those of us who retire this year and next.  I thank all of you for being here and for making a difference in the lives of those you touch through your teaching.

Paula