"The Single Most Important Job"

Meet eight teachers on the front lines of education in America

By Paul E. Kandarian

They've ventured far-one teaches high school biology in the Pacific Northwest-and stayed close to home; one taught in the poorest section of Worcester fresh out of college before moving a couple of towns away to teach in another system. But these eight teachers, alumni of Holy Cross with more than 100 years of combined teaching experience among them, all point to their alma mater as giving them the support and encouragement they needed to become teachers-what one calls "the single most important job anyone could have."

Martha McGuane '77 teaches English at Malden (Mass.) Catholic High School. She did not originally intend to go into teaching, initially wanting to pursue journalism. A Jesuit friend suggested the classroom, she found an opening and a newfound love for a different career.

"I really liked it," she says. "I could see and understand why working with students and making them love learning is so important."

The rewards are many, including spending time with individual students and helping them develop confidence in themselves, and the drawbacks few, the biggest of which is paperwork preparation for the classroom. The challenge has not changed much in her 20 years of teaching: Getting the students to focus and like what they're doing. But the times have.

"Students always want to watch the video (of a literary work) before they read the book," McGuane says. "And there are so many more outside influences now than when I was young, education isn't the priority it used to be."

McGuane's dad, George, was a 1937 graduate of Holy Cross, so coming to Holy Cross was the logical choice.

"I enrolled when the College was just going co-ed. My father had so many great memories there, I thought I just had to be there," she says. "It was challenging, stimulating, and the Jesuits were wonderful."

"Professor John Wilson of the Holy Cross English department was my mentor," she says. She also credits Professor John Dorenkamp for his help in setting up her internship at a Worcester television station, Professor Maurice Géracht, whom she vividly recalls teaching a very interesting short story course, and Professor Patrick Ireland, for instilling in her a lasting love of literature.

Holy Cross was all in the family for Kathleen Sprague '87, whose dad, Joe, was a 1952 graduate. Sprague, a Rhode Island native, now teaches biology at Aloha High School in Beaverton, Ore. A biology major at Holy Cross, she was not thinking of teaching at all but became interested while with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) in Anchorage, Alaska. She is now in her fifth full year of teaching.

"I was in premed at Holy Cross but never declared," she says. "Then when I had to write why I wanted to go to med school, I just didn't have strong enough reasons."

Every day of teaching is different from the last, Sprague says, "and the hours just fly by. You're never bored. Every period can be different, not just every day."

The biggest plus of the job, she says, is "to have students come up and say that they finally got something, really understood something that they had been struggling with."

One of Sprague's former students recently came back to tell her that, because of her enthusiasm for teaching the subject, "he wants to study biotechnology in college. Feedback like that is pretty rewarding."

"Holy Cross basically sparked my love for learning," Sprague says. "I had some truly excellent professors, and I'm sure their impact ignited that love."

In particular, she credits Professor George Hoffmann for developing her interest in genetics, and also Rev. John Paris, S.J., who taught law, medicine and ethics.

"We'd read these articles that concerned deep ethical issues, and Fr. Paris would put a couple of people on the hot seat every period; I remember being there myself a few times, and he'd always play the devil's advocate," Sprague says. "I found it was a very engaging way to teach. It made you really think of what your stance was. It was a fabulous class."

Fresh out of the blocks is Mallory Macdonald '99, who initially taught at Sullivan Middle School in Worcester upon graduation and now teaches sixth grade at the Florence Sawyer School in nearby Bolton, a K-8 school. She was a chemistry major at Holy Cross and has always loved working with children, she says; as a student, she worked in the Big Friends/Little Friends organization.

Initially, she was thinking of getting into pharmaceutical sales after graduation but was drawn to teaching-possibly because her mother is a preschool teacher, and teaching is something she grew up around, she says.

"She's taught all her life, and she never pushed me into it," Macdonald says. "She told me if I wanted to get into it later, it's not hard to take the master's course after graduation."

Noting that while teaching in one of Worcester's poorer districts was a very different experience from her current position in Bolton, she says, "It's still the same thing. No matter where you teach, you have to figure out how to reach the kids."

Macdonald says her overall experience at Holy Cross was invaluable in shaping her young adult life.

"I got a lot of support from the teachers in the chemistry department who helped me get through my major, and advisors who helped me choose classes and listened to me when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do," she says. "Naming a few wouldn't do justice to them all."

She knows as a young teacher she has a lot yet to learn, but she has already absorbed a most valuable lesson from the experienced staff around her. 

"There are so many who have been there for a long time, and they're still very enthusiastic, still coming in early, staying late, coming in over the weekends," she says. "I hope always to be that type of teacher."

At the other end of the experience spectrum is James Hart '61, a social studies teacher at East Hartford (Conn.) High School. A history major at Holy Cross, he credits Professor William Grattan as being a wonderful teacher and a friend in whom he could confide. 

After graduation, Hart spent four years in the Navy, then earned his master's degree from Columbia and found his niche in the teaching life.

When he started teaching 35 years ago, East Hartford was largely a blue-collar town. Pratt-Whitney, the jet engine-making giant, was headquartered in the city, and things were good. But later, with military cutbacks and job layoffs, the town and its people changed, Hart says, adding that while the faces of the children over the last four decades have become vastly different, the fundamentals have remained the same.

"My basic experience is 'kids are kids,' but students today bring an entirely new cultural background with them," Hart says. "If school is not important to the family, it's not going to be important to the child, and that's a big problem. By the time they get to high school, it's hard to change that attitude, that has to take place early. Mom and dad are still the first teachers a child will have."

The profession has changed-and then changed back again, Hart says: "They keep trying to reinvent the wheel, but if you teach long enough, you see cycles come back. What they call block scheduling now was called variable scheduling then. They're always trying to find a better way, but the reality is that learning is hard work. If you're not going to invest time and energy in it, nothing is going to change."

Computers have changed the educational landscape, he agrees, but not always for the better.

"Students think they can just go on the Net, look something up, print it out and hand it in," he says. "That doesn't solve the problem. It just makes (solutions) easier to find."

Daniel E. Gutekanst '81, who is principal of Shrewsbury (Mass.) High School, was an English major at Holy Cross when he got the teaching bug from Rev. Paul Harman, S.J.

" I was looking for something to do in my senior year and took this Philosophy of Education course with Fr. Paul," Gutekanst says. "I was really enthused by the topic and fascinated by the idea of different kinds of educational philosophies. That really turned me on."

He then heard about the JVC and ended up at a Catholic high school in Los Angeles that needed an English/religious education teacher.

"I thought, 'Gee, I grew up in Chicago, went to school on the East Coast and would love to see what California is like,'" he says. "So I spent a year as a Jesuit volunteer at the school where to be honest, I really wasn't that good at the religious education part but loved teaching English."

Teaching for room, board and a $50 monthly stipend made him realize he had to teach for actual money to survive, so he went to Verbum Dei High School in Watts, which was and remains one of the most violent areas of the West Coast.

"But the school was an oasis in the middle of chaos, the kids came from pretty remarkable backgrounds and extremely trying and violent situations," Gutekanst says. "The principal and staff there just inspired me."

And it's where he learned the poignant reality that "being a classroom teacher is the single most important job anyone could have."

What he thought would last a year lasted seven, he says, and presented him with "an awesome experience. The students were wonderful, so many tried and went to college, but so many were claimed by the streets. I attended more funerals there than I have since."

The ties were strong, however, and remain so: One former student is godfather to his daughter. 

He eventually came back East to be closer to his wife's family in New England- he and his wife, Karen (Robert '81), met at Holy Cross-and became an assistant principal at Brookfield High School in Connecticut, an upper middle-class community 3,000 miles and cultural light-years removed from Watts. 

He credits Dean Joseph Maguire with being a key role model for him, as well as English professors Tom Lawler, Helen Whall and Bob Cording. But mostly, he credits the entire Holy Cross experience for helping to shape his future.

"Our students have to go out and work at food banks, senior centers, soup kitchens. This community interaction I learned at Holy Cross," he says. "It makes a community thrive and makes a high school community a diverse and exciting place." 

John Power '69 is another longtime veteran of the educational trenches. He recalls Professor Edward Callahan, former chair of the English department and James Joyce expert, as a strong influence in his academic life. Power, who is now an English teacher at Las Vegas (Nev.) High School, says that he did not initially plan a career in education. Completing a stint in the Army after college, Power worked as a substitute teacher at the Worcester Boys Trade High School, where his father, David '20, had taught for 43 years.

Power went to graduate school at Loyola Marymount and "just about got my master's in communications arts," he says. He went to work for the famed marketing information firm, J.D. Power and Associates, owned by his brother, James '53. Power later got a copywriting job in Las Vegas and even trained as a poker dealer.

"Then, out of sheer necessity, I started subbing and found I liked it," he says. "I think it was in my blood, from my father."

While Vegas is perceived as all glitter and gold, the educational reality is anything but, Power says.

"It's a good school, but we have our share of the problems all schools have," he says. 

The rewards of teaching are seeing students succeed against long odds, he says.

"I had this Cambodian student I had to flunk, and it broke my heart, but he had language-barrier problems," Power says. "He struggled and worked very hard and finally, he graduated. I later found out he went to community college. Against all odds, this kid made it."

It's the students that keep teachers teaching for as long as he has, Power says. "Any teacher will tell you-you have to like being around the kids. If you don't, there's no way you can hack it. We get a lot of young teachers here and after two or three years, half of them quit."

The hard part of teaching is "dealing with the administration, and the way we're treated by the community. We're constantly getting pounded in the papers. Here, we hadn't had a raise in several years, and last year got a one-percent bonus."

So why not move onto something else?

"Yesterday, I was tutoring a Filipino girl who needs to pass a proficiency test to get a high school degree. She's taking a community college course to do it," Power says. "If she succeeds, that's what makes it all worthwhile. When you see a student succeed, that makes you feel good even though it's a day-to-day thing. If you can get through to students and get them to apply themselves where they haven't . that's worth it."

Kathleen O'Connell Byrne '87, a fifth-grade teacher at P.S. 29 in Brooklyn, has only been a teacher for the last three years. She had been in advertising and marketing but wasn't really happy with those fields, she says. An English and French major at Holy Cross, she went to Columbia University's Teachers College, earning her master's degree in education and teaching certificate in two years.

A social studies teacher, Byrne finds the social element challenging in the different cultures students bring to the classroom.

"I teach a gifted class, and we can do a lot of engaging work, but that diverse social element is still there," she says. "The other challenge is teaching in New York City; there are wonderful rewards, but the schools don't have nearly the resources you find outside the city."

The New Jersey native says her father, Edward "Bud" O'Connell '61, ignited her interest in attending the College. Byrne says she loved her experience on the Hill.

"I did tutor students there. I was a Big Sister and had involvement with a lot of young people. I loved being a student, I really did," she says. "Now I can read great books and discuss them with my students. I love that part of the job."

Byrne says Callahan introduced her to Shakespeare, explaining that "he taught literature and history all intermingled. It was fascinating taking literature and placing it in a social context."
She also credits Ireland as an influence in her life-"someone who made me really look at what I was reading in a new and different way."

Caren Izzo '97 worked for Teachers For America, a nonprofit organization that places recent college grads in poor public schools across the country. She worked two years in inner-city schools in Newark, N.J., immediately after graduating from Holy Cross, and now teaches at Haddonfield Middle School in New Jersey, about 20 minutes from her hometown.

"To be honest, I didn't know what I wanted to do after Holy Cross," says Izzo, a sociology major. "But my mom is a teacher and education has always been very important to me. This is a way of giving back and making a difference, and, ultimately, that's why I continue to stay in it."

Teaching eighth-grade American history in an upper middle-class community is "180 degrees from where I was" at the inner-city schools of Newark, she says, but "I have the experience of seeing two extremes."

Inner-city or wealthy suburbs, students are students and have the same issues, she says: learning and staying focused. Noting that parental influence is key to a child's educational success, she says that involvement varies from location to location. 

"In Newark, there wasn't a lot of parental involvement, and now, parents sometimes feel like they know everything about teaching and how to do your job," Izzo says. "But I really like where I am now and am confident in my teaching."

In a way, Izzo says, all her Holy Cross professors influenced her perspective of "what makes a good education." But, in particular, she says, professors Carolyn Howe and David Hummon "academically helped shape some of my ideas in a more global sense, not in terms of teaching but in terms of thinking about the purpose of education and its function in society."

And that purpose and function are simple, Izzo says, echoing a philosophy that seems to be shared by the other Holy Cross graduates working in education: "You want to be an influence on young minds. Students sometimes ask me why I want to be a teacher. I tell them I just want to make sure I have some sort of role in the shaping of America.

"Teaching," she says, "is one of the most important jobs you can do."

Paul Kandarian is a free-lance journalist from Taunton, Mass.