Lessons From Life : Education: Older teachers can bring stability and experience to the job. Three who are in their 70s share their secrets for longevity despite the stresses of the classroom.
Classroom crises. Seemingly endless stacks of papers to grade. Long hours, including work at home, that don’t begin to be reflected by a paycheck. Lack of appreciation. A nettlesome bureaucracy.
They are all part of a stressful scenario that spells burnout for some teachers. National studies show that half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years. Indeed, in a survey of job-stress experts by Men’s Health magazine, the stress levels of a male inner-city teacher equal those of a police officer.
But although many teachers abandon their profession in frustration, others forge on well past the day that they could have drawn their first Social Security checks.
Sam Douglas, 71, rises extra early each morning to attend Mass before arriving at Cleveland High School in Reseda to teach math. Eleanor Bralver, 77, instructs students at Sylmar High School about health, exploring subjects from teen-age pregnancy to child abuse to gangs. Herb Wolfson, 73, uses a puppet to get second-graders at O’Melveny School in San Fernando interested in reading.
Such teachers are a minority in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has 30,000 teachers, only 102 of whom are 70 or older. Of those, 23 work in the San Fernando Valley. (Nationally, 7,000 people age 66 or older were teaching in public schools in the 1987-88 school year, according to the latest figures available from the U. S. Department of Education. That’s 0.3% of the teaching work force.)
The efforts of Douglas, Bralver and Wolfson receive praise from students and principals alike.
“She’s really a good teacher and she explains everything,” Sylmar High student Brittany Ayers said of Bralver. “She’s just really open and is good because she understands us.”
When asked if she knows her teacher’s age, Ayers responded: “She’s 77, I think. She always brags about it.”
O’Melveny Principal Lucky Hemphill recalls Wolfson telling a parent on a back-to-school night that he couldn’t wait to teach the infant child who sat on the man’s lap. Many years ago, Wolfson taught the man himself.
“He’s a traditional, caring teacher who is strong in the fundamentals,” Hemphill said. “He does everything that all the other teachers do. I don’t think he’s limited because of his age. He can keep going as long as his health allows him.”
Older teachers bring knowledge and experience to the school setting, said Nina Greenberg, elementary vice president for United Teachers-Los Angeles, the district’s main teachers union.
“They can provide a lot of stability for a staff. They’re able to give advice to new teachers and provide an interesting perspective,” Greenberg said. “We think it’s important they get respect for their expertise.”
What is the trio’s secret for longevity? Douglas cites his daily exercise routine and a healthy attitude; Bralver says it’s her love of teaching; Wolfson says he keeps going to show his co-workers who “can’t believe that I’m allowed to do what I want to do.”
Here’s a closer look at the qualities that have helped Douglas, Bralver and Wolfson remain committed to their jobs.
Sam Douglas, 71
Students in Douglas’ math class are exposed to more than just equations, angles and numbers. It’s not part of the official curriculum, but they also get a lesson in life.
An admirer of noted thinkers from Aristotle to Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Douglas injects logic and philosophy into his math classes.
“Unless they have a good philosophy, they won’t make it. You can’t put a price tag on love or a child or life,” Douglas said. “That’s why they shoot each other, because they have a price tag on life. They have to realize there are things that are priceless and, if they realize that, then they would have a second thought before they go out and shoot somebody.”
A graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, Douglas started teaching high school in 1949 in Opelousas, La., and moved to Los Angeles in 1961. He arrived at racially diverse Cleveland High in 1982 from Fremont High School in Los Angeles.
Douglas, who will turn 72 in November, is a vibrant man with a dulcet voice who uses maxims to pass on his deepest thoughts.
“As I tell it in my classroom, if you take all the oceans in the world and fill them up with diamonds and take all the seas and fill them up with gold, all that wealth would not be worth one” of the students, he said. And believing you are that precious, Douglas added, is the key to staying out of trouble.
But even when his students fall short of that goal, Douglas continues to speak his philosophy in hopes of sparing other students an unhappy life.
Once, after one of his pupils had been arrested for drug possession, Douglas told his other students that their peer had lost everything, including his character. To that, a student responded that with all the money drug dealers make, one could buy character. Not so, according to Douglas.
“He can buy a reputation, but not character,” Douglas said. “Reputation is what people think you are. Character is what you know you are.”
The son of a Baptist minister and a teacher, Douglas joined the Catholic church when he was 19. He attends Mass daily at Our Lady of Lourdes church in Northridge, and visits the gym each afternoon. Married for 41 years and the father of five, Douglas is frequently thought to be younger than his 71 years. (His secret: wheat germ, vitamins and Baby Magic lotion.)
Every day, he comes to school dressed in a business suit, which he says is as much out of respect for “the young ladies” as to make a good impression on the teen-age boys. At prom time, the young men ask to borrow his cuff links. They always return them.
Seven rules are posted in Douglas’ class, reminding students of common courtesy, such as being in their seats when the second bell rings. When he finishes working a math problem at the board, he often says, “Hot dog, on time,” a phrase that his students repeat when they correctly complete a task inside or outside the classroom.
“I don’t believe in rigid discipline,” he said. “They are young people and if they’re bubbling over by learning, I let them bubble.”
Eleanor Bralver, 77
Standing at the front of the classroom, Bralver fires off a series of questions to her Sylmar High students.
“Why do teen-agers get pregnant?Do you think guys have sex to prove they are a man? Do girls have babies because they are lonely? If a guy takes drugs, will it affect his baby?Would you get an abortion if your baby had a birth defect?”
The dialogue between Bralver and her charges is right to the point. Bralver doesn’t mince words when she talks about sex in her health class. She can’t; three of her teen-age students last semester are mothers. Many other students are at similar risk.
“I warn all of you, if you have a baby at 14, 15, 16 or 17, something like 70% of you will have your second baby by age 20,” she said.
One of the young mothers tells Bralver that her 16-year-old friend wants to have a baby. She explains that her friend is lonely and believes that a baby will bring her happiness. Bralver tells the student-mother to invite the girl over to her house so she can see firsthand what raising a child is all about.
“You may not care what happens to your life, but you have no right to bring a kid into the world until you’re ready to take care of it properly,” the teacher said. “Does that make sense?”
Instead of a textbook, she uses handouts so the students will receive more up-to-date information. She also brings in guest speakers, such as the AIDS patients who addressed a class last spring. In 1974, she co-wrote a book of student essays called “Teenagers Inside Out.”
Bralver began teaching in 1935 in Detroit. She taught physical education for eight years, then took off 21 years to raise her two sons. When her youngest son wanted to go to college, she decided to go back into teaching to earn some money for his tuition. She taught as a substitute for 3 1/2 years in Los Angeles schools before starting full-time at Sylmar in 1969. She barely escaped being forced to quit when the mandatory retirement laws changed. Bralver, who turns 78 next month, has no plans to leave the classroom.
“I don’t know how many years I have. I’d like to just keep going forever,” she said.
Herb Wolfson, 73
Forty-four years after he became a teacher, Wolfson generally uses the same methods.
“Education hasn’t changed. I teach the same way I always have; that’s why I’m successful,” he said. “I do things that work.”
As a second-grade teacher at O’Melveny, Wolfson tries to impart the love of reading to his “kiddies.” But first, they must learn the basics.
He shows his mostly 7-year-old students the differences between homonyms and synonyms, nouns and pronouns. They recite sentences, sounding out every word in the sentence three times, and explain the rules of English out loud.
“When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking,” they say in unison.
As a treat, he pulls out a puppet and plays a children’s record describing the character named P. Mooney. The kids sing along with the voice on the record, then do it a cappella , with only the words written on a large sheet to help them. In a deep voice, Wolfson occasionally reminds them to stay with the music. Sometimes he even plays the piano in class. Although most of his students are Latino, they read and sing in English.
“I take care of the best and work with the rest to make sure they can be successful too,” Wolfson said. “Not everybody plays with the Dodgers.”
It could be said that Wolfson was destined to be a teacher. After four years of pre-med studies at La Salle College in Philadelphia, Wolfson joined the Army Air Corps and served as a navigator in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands during World War II. As a second lieutenant, he often was approached by cadets to explain what a higher-ranking officer had just said.
“I’ve always had a knack of explaining things to make it easier to understand,” he said modestly.
Wolfson, who has been married for 46 years and has two sons, started his teaching career at O’Melveny in 1947 after studying music at USC.
“I’ve been a lucky person,” the piano-playing teacher said. “I’ve made my avocation my vocation.”
On the playground, Wolfson, who will be 74 in November, does his job like any of the school’s other teachers. While turning the end of a red, white and blue plastic jump rope, he asks with a smile:”How many grandfathers can do this?”
