NORTH’S LOSS

When I first started thinking about official steps towards retirement from full-time teaching at Parkway North High School, a dear friend and trusted colleague responded, “North’s loss!”

North’s loss? No, Parkway’s loss, no, America’s loss; and it will be one of seasoning: that intangible quality of knowing what to do, intuitively, that comes only with time and experience and, only then, if you are very lucky.

For some time it has been predicted that nationwide, a large percentage of America’s public school teachers will retire within a five to seven year span between now and the new century. These teachers, children and grandchildren of farmers, blue collar workers and tradesmen, spawned in the aftermath of the Great Depression—these last-of-the-depression babies, nurtured in the dark, home front years of World War II, and lured into teaching after the national shock of Sputnik, will be retiring at about the same time. All of this when the schools are inundated with a barrage of new challenges, threats and demands from all sides.

There is no substitute for experience.

There will be a loss, alright. But it’s not just North’s loss, or Parkway’s loss—or our nation’s loss. It will be the nation’s kids who will lose most when and if upwards of 56% of the nation’s master teachers retire within the same time-frame. These kids, today’s kids, need stability, a code of conduct, a model to emulate, someone to look up to—NOW more than any other generation has ever needed these qualities in its teachers. With society’s established institutions: workplace, church, neighborhood, home, family, imploding around them, they look to their teachers. Even the most pseudo-sophisticated (usually girls), and the most macho-facade-ed (usually boys) are silently crying out, “Help me. Advise me. Give me some part of your old fashioned naïve optimism that’s still linked to the American Dream. I am drowning here. I can’t numb myself with M.T.V., the mall, or inhalants any longer.”

The need, and in spite of the surface façade, want:

—Kindness-from the grey hairs.

—Understanding-from those wrinkled faces.

—Advice from those “been-there”-substitute grandparents.

—And patient mentoring all along the way.

There is no substitute for experience—and today’s kids sense it.

EPILOGUE

“What did you do in the Depression—teacher?”

We prayed daddy found day work and then looked forward to the 5-cent ice cream cone on Friday night.

Bill Vivrett