Wheat-dogg’s world
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Today marks the end of classes here, and the end of my 24-year-long classroom presence at St. Francis High School (The School of Thought). Beginning next September, I will embark on a new professional activity, teaching English in Hunan, China.

So I am facing today with a mixture of relief, regret and some excitement (while trying to think with a brain fog-bound with a nasty headcold).

Back in the mid-1980s, a co-worker of mine at the University of Louisville arranged for me to observe physics classes at this tiny independent high school downtown. It had a reputation of being “alternative” and I was interested in observing both “regular” and “irregular” classes as part of my master’s degree. So, I sat in the physics classes of Don Esbenshade (Mr. E to his students) for roughly 20 hours.

Don used the Conceptual Physics college text by Paul G. Hewitt, which used a minimal math approach completely new to me. It was a refreshing idea — to teach physics concepts and logic without bogging students down with solving problems using fancy algebra and trigonometry. While St. Francis also taught physics at the AP level, most students took the Conceptual course.

Toward the end of my 20-hour observation time. Don asked if I was interested in taking his place at the school, since he had been planning for a few years to pursue a PhD in physics, which would require him to leave Louisville. Although I not yet finished the master’s program, I said sure. I was tired of living on a grad assistant’s stipend.

The founding head of the school took a chance on me, a former newspaper reporter with little if any classroom experience, since I had the creds and I suppose a supportive recommendation from Esbenshade. I started as a “part-time” teacher — the part-time is in quotes because students immediately corraled me into being the founding adviser to the school’s newspaper. There is no such thing as part-time when you advise a student publication.

Much to my surprise, I was not only pretty good at teaching physics — a subject I love — but I also enjoyed the classroom experience. Our kids then as now were intellectually engaged and engaging, willing to ask questions, challenge thought processes and work on material foreign to them. I learned that physics teachers have the best teaching job in the world — they get to play with “toys” while being paid for it. Lab time was as much fun for the students as it was for me. (Actually, I probably enjoyed it more.)

Other than a year in South Africa on a teaching exchange, I have spent the last 24 years teaching three levels of the physics at the same school. In 2001 I also became the technology coordinator, ending up with a reduced teaching load but a plethora of other hassles. Long ago, I told a student that I would stay with it as long as I enjoyed the work. Once entering the classroom became more of a chore than a fun activity, I figured it would be time to move on.

That point came sometime last academic year. I cannot exactly say when it or how it happened. The kids were still fun to work with (ninth graders take physics here now). Lab work was still engaging. I had plenty of tech challenges and plans to tackle. There was just no sparkle anymore. It may have been a combination of a midlife crisis and incipient empty-nest syndrome, since our youngest would be graduating that May.

While I could have looked for another physics job, or a tech job, I was ready for a real change of pace. For some time, I knew that English teachers were in great demand overseas, and well, I speak English. (And I was a comparative lit major in college.) As it turns out, St. Francis had just started a Chinese language program that fall, importing a woman from Hunan to teach the classes. Toward the end of the school year, I asked Connie if her university back home employed foreigners as English teachers. She said they did, and if I were interested she would mention it to the head of her English department.

Six months later I got an email from China requesting documentation to process my foreign expert visa. At that point I submitted my resignation to St. Francis.

Like Janus I am looking both toward the past and toward the future. On this last day of teaching at St. Francis, I’m reflecting on the countless hours I have spent in three (or four — I forget) different classrooms managing students, assignments, books, lab apparatus, computers and ideas over the last 2.5 decades. At the same time, I (like our seniors) am anticipating a new milieu, new friends, new activities and the requirement to learn new skills, in a country I have never visited.

In a sense, I suppose I am reinventing myself. I have been “Mr Physics” to a generation of students. Had anyone told me in 1984 that I would be spending nearly half my life working and living in the same place I would have told them they were nuts. I didn’t plan to stay this long, but as long as the job was fun, why give up a good thing?

But all good things come to an end, and I figure it’s time for me to step aside and let another teacher be “Mr or Ms Physics.” Whether they stay as long as I have is doubtful. Few young people stay in teaching longer than five years. You never can tell, though. They might discover, as I did, that teaching is surprisingly habit-forming.