Out To Pasture, Part 3

The Friday Before The Infinity-Day Weekend

Friday of the Infinity-Day Weekend

This is the third installment of my occasional series about retirement life; The first one (about, among other things, the grief that accompanies leaving ones career) is here, and the second one (about hearing loss) is here . This one actually deals with preparing for retirement, (mentally, not financially).

When I first became a public school teacher, I was 27, and I needed to grow up in a hurry. I fell in with a group of other male teachers, decades older than me. We’d go to the Y once a week and play racketball, and from them I learned a lot about how to conduct myself, as a professional, as a husband, as a man, as a human.

Chatting afterward one time, one of them mentioned he had been teaching 30 years. I was amazed, he didn’t seem nearly old enough to be able to make the claim. I was used to thinking of 40 as middle aged, 50 as old, but my friend here was still vital, curious, and active (not to mention routinely able to beat me at racketball); I began to adjust my views of age.

Anyway, I remember thinking of his statement that he’d taught 30 years, “That is so cool! Will I ever be able to say that?” It resonated within me, though it seemed inconceivable; I hadn’t done anything for 30 years yet. At that moment, 30 years in the classroom became a personal goal, one I eventually reached and surpassed.

In time I went from being the rookie of one teaching staff to the longest-serving instructor at a different school. Where once I had walked in awe of the veteran teachers and tried to absorb everything about them¹, one day I realized that younger staff were watching me with that same wide-eyed look and seeking me out for advice when they had a classroom issue.

Inevitably, I began thinking about retirement as colleagues and friends who were older began stepping away. After I made the personal milestone of 30 years in the classroom, I decided whatever years I had left at work were victory laps, as I’d already achieved the goal I’d set myself more than half a lifetime ago. My niece has called retirement “the infinity-day weekend,” and I realized that for me, career-wise, it was Friday afternoon…

Here are a few things I learned as I prepared to retire. I offer them to anyone who’s looking ahead to their last years on the job (or their last weeks). Most of these ideas came from friends who had retired. They aren’t original and if any of them prove useful to you, I’m not taking credit for them, please pass them along.

The Two Penny Jars

One friend told me that his friend had told him, “Once you know you can count the remaining years on the fingers of one hand, everything starts to look very different.” In my case, that proved true. I stopped fretting about workplace changes that might happen (for example, throughout my career, there was talk about “going to year-round school,” doing away with the long summer vacation. It had never happened (and it still hasn’t), and I resolved not to spend another instant thinking about it. There were a thousand other long-range issues that I just quit obsessing about, choosing instead to savor every remaining day I had with my students and my colleagues.

Following the example set by my friend, when I had three years left until my planned exit date, I put 540 pennies in a Mason jar, representing the school days I had left to work. Every evening after work, I took out one penny and placed it in an identical jar alongside the first one

.That was my visible representation of how long I’d worked compared to how long I had yet to work, but for me it also represented something else: I loved my job, and every day I got to spend with kids and colleagues was something precious, to be appreciated, not wasted or wished away.

Don’t Divorce Your Job

I watched how colleagues conducted themselves in their final years on the job.

I worked at a fairly easy school, with mostly motivated students, supportive parents, positive colleagues and bosses. Still, there was always plenty to gripe about in the staff room: kids acting out, time-consuming bureaucratic record keeping, nasty emails from parents, what some know-nothing in the state legislature said about teachers, the endless pile of assignments needing to be checked, time wasted in staff meetings learning about half-baked, certain-to-fail new initiatives dreamed up by middle management², etc., etc.

Everyone who has taught for decades has found a way to put up with these annoyances, or they would have quit long since. However, I noticed some soon-to-retire teachers would start griping, bitterly and non-stop, about these perennial headaches and blame their retirement on these problems, as though they had not existed until recently.

“I just can’t take it anymore. It never used to be like this! This group of kids are the worst we’ve ever had. Their parents don’t have a clue. Omigod, the new principal is the worst ever. That’s why I’m leaving!” they would thunder, not caring what they were doing to the morale of all the rest of us who needed to stay.

I came to believe they were doing what I call “divorcing their job,” covering their complicated feelings of loss and fear for what their lives would be like without the daily structure of work, not acknowledging the changes weren’t really external but internal.

Teaching is very demanding work; it takes energy and stamina to do it well, and those are attributes we find we have less of as we age. Instead of accepting that we are getting older (and therefore that we will one day die), it’s easier to blame the stupidities of our workplace, forgetting that it was ever thus but that we were once younger, stronger, and more able to bear life’s slings and arrows.

To put it another way: “I’m out of here because this place has gone to hell” is easier to live with than “I’m not sure I can do this any more; I may have gotten too old.” By contrast, I noted that certain of my favorite colleagues went out quietly and with dignity.

I particularly remember the exits of two colleagues, friends that I had worked with for years. One of them told me matter-of-factly, during her last week on the job, that she was trying a new classroom strategy because she had heard about it and was curious about how it would work. Wow, talk about staying married to your job right to the end!

I noticed the other one, after the bell had rung on the last day of her teaching career, stayed behind to help a student who was struggling to finish a last-minute math assignment which would enable the student to barely pass the class. My friend was kneeling alongside the student’s desk, patiently helping her just the way she had helped countless other students every day of her long tenure, not seeking glory, but just because she had a talent and wanted to use it to help others.

Because of the fine example set by those two and other colleagues I admired, I determined that when it was time for me to move on, I would make sure it wasn’t about me, that I would do what I’d always tried to do and finish strongly, like a marathoner in the middle of the pack, kicking in the last half-mile. Lots would finish ahead of me, but I wouldn’t need accolades, because I’d know I’d done my best.

When It’s Over, It’s Over

My wife wisely advised me not to tell the school community I was leaving until shortly before the end. She pointed out that from the minute I went public, I’d be a lame duck, with others looking past me and positioning themselves for whatever came after I was gone.

I had to tell a few folks; my co-principals needed to know, so they could recruit and plan for the subsequent year. I had a protege whom I hoped would succeed me as department chair; I decided to tell her I wasn’t coming back, so that I could focus her attention on some practices I considered important. Those three kindly agreed to keep my secret. If anyone else asked about retirement plans, I’d just say I didn’t know yet.

As it turned out, there was a perfect candidate to succeed me for my job, but he didn’t get it; instead I was not replaced and my hours were parted out to several part-time staff. My designated successor as department chair hung on for a while, but eventually decided she didn’t like the role and passed it on after a few years.

The science fair I had nurtured for decades until it became the largest in the state withered away a few years after I left. Curriculum I had poured my heart into was abandoned and replaced. And that was even before the pandemic changed almost everything about the way our school had been run during my decades there.

My point is you have no say once you leave, and things will change almost beyond recognition. If you value your sanity, lean forward into your new life and don’t look back. Unless you intend to jump back into the trenches and help out, don’t belabor your former colleagues with your opinions. No one cares how it used to be. Accepting that is a key to a fulfilling retirement, I think.

The Last Bell

My final year, I taught four sections of sixth-graders and one section of eighth-graders. The eighth-graders were one of the two or three very best groups of students I ever taught (sorry to break it to you, but, yes, teachers do have favorites).

But you’re not supposed to let them know they’re your favorites. “Don’t smile until Christmas” is an old teacher adage, meaning be strict and distant until the students understand who’s boss.

Knowing it was my last year (though my students didn’t know), I just couldn’t maintain the facade with this group. They worked hard, were always upbeat, were kind to each other and appreciative to me; they were a joy to be around, and I just couldn’t help myself, I told them so often.³

I wanted my last day with them to be just another last school day as it would have been any other year, finishing up any last-minute classroom business, wishing the students a good summer, hear about their vacation plans, no drama, focus on them, not me. Of course, by now my retirement was public and this lovely group of 13- and 14-year olds knew it was my last teaching day ever; they had their own idea.

There was a young lady who always took attendance for me at the beginning of the period, I’ll call her Alix. I’d leave the attendance book open, Alix would come up, look at the seating chart, and mark down anyone who was absent, silently show the book to me, and then go back to her seat, so that I could start right in teaching and interacting with the students without the distraction of calling the roll. Of course, I was legally responsible for the attendance being accurate, but time had proven that Alix always got it right.

A few days earlier, Alix had asked me how many chemical elements there were. I’d been surprised, since our unit on the periodic table had ended months before and this is not the type of question that randomly commands the attention of a 14-year-old girl’s mind too often. Still, my students surprised me every day, so I gave her the answer.⁴

At any rate, on this last day, I looked around and Alix wasn’t there, which was highly unusual; she was never absent. Confused, I asked another student if she had seen Alix, then noticed that her best friend was also gone. As I started putting a mark by their names in the attendance book, they waltzed in from the hallway, pushing a cart. On the cart was a periodic table made of 93 home-made cupcakes, each one decorated with a chemical symbol written in frosting.

There were also other messages in frosting: “We Love U” and “Thank U”

.I was completely surprised. My determination to keep everything normal and maintain a stiff upper lip dissolved in an instant. For the only time in my 33 years as a teacher, my students got to see me burst into tears

.May your last day at work be as joyous and meaningful as mine was. As always, thanks for reading.

1. I used to sit in a chair in the hallway outside the classrooms of some teachers (the ones my students indicated they respected most), watching them teach. I sat so I couldn’t see the room full of students, only their teacher (I knew full well already what the students in a classroom looked like). I wanted to focus on what the teacher said and did, to find their secret sauce, which turned out was being positive and firm but fair. Another huge life lesson. Classroom management is paramount; until you can project that attitude, all the pedagogical theories you learned in education school are worthless.

2. A/k/a (by teachers) “Overpaid refugees from the classroom”. Often pictured (by me) sitting in comfortable chairs in comfortable, air-conditioned offices, wearing beanie-copters, spending their copious free time licking their pencil points, in delicious anticipation of adding to their lists of ways experienced teachers can do their jobs better. But, I digress…

3. Sadly, since I retired in 2016, my last eighth-graders were the Class of 2020, so they graduated during the start of pandemic. Their graduation was remote, there was no prom, they didn’t get to be the big dogs in their spring sport or choir or drama or whatever their passion was. Of any group I ever taught, they had bought into these pursuits and ceremonies wholeheartedly. I emailed several of them to tell them how sorry I was about the disappointing end to their high school careers, and (typically) they admitted it was sad for them but then immediately told me how excited they were for college and ways they hoped to serve humankind. What a group of humans; long may you roll!

4. Actually, Alix got a lot more answer than she needed, since the question is complex. There are 93 elements found in nature, but many more that have been manufactured in labs, though they are all radioactive and decompose to simpler elements in micro-fractions of a second. The official count, as of this writing and according to Wikipedia, is 118. Alix didn’t need to know any of that, but I didn’t know that.