A Teacher's Reward

Education is a gift parents give their children, bought and paid for with their tax dollars or tuition money. In return, teachers open up children's lives and pour in knowledge. It was in the classroom that I first heard classical music (Beethoven), listened to a narrative poem (Longfellow), saw an Impressionist painting (Renoir).

My public school teachers introduced me to a world that stretched far beyond my little plot of Missouri prairie and encouraged me to reach beyond my imagination, to dream, to excel. Teachers still are among the most influential mentors in our country.

"All of us remember a teacher who changed our lives," First Lady Laura Bush said in a recent interview with Parade magazine. "I think teaching is like a calling, because it is very hard ... Really good teachers are the ones who accept the challenge that teaching offers."
Mrs. Bush, a former teacher, credits her second-grade instructor, Mrs. Gnagy, as the educator who most impacted her young life. Howard Westerman was among my most influential role models. The long-suffering high school science teacher tried to teach me how molecules worked, but no matter how many times I connected Styrofoam balls with straws they still looked like Styrofoam balls. I'd always collapse in a paroxysm of giggles trying to keep my carefully constructed "molecules" from falling apart and bouncing all over the science lab.

I was also responsible for unplanned explosions, foaming chemicals that weren't supposed to, and permanent stains on Mr. Westerman's new lab sink, so for 40 years I was sure I was one of his biggest disappointments. Not so, he now says.

"It is a thrill," he wrote me recently, "to see your column in my local paper, the 'Kansas City Star.' I was lucky to have some very talented students and as they become successful it is almost a feeling like a proud father multiplied hundreds of times."

He tactfully made no mention of overflowing beakers and bouncing Styrofoam balls when he praised an eighth grade science project in which I used an umbrella lined with tin foil to concentrate the heat of the sun. "It worked!" he remembered, then added, "Next, I tried to make a chemist out of you. That didn't work."

Mr. Westerman -- he was always "Mr." to us -- taught more than 3,000 students during a 35-year career that ended with his 1992 retirement to his family farm on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. Looking back, he realized it wasn't just his "best" students who've succeeded in life.
"Most find jobs or start businesses that perform a very useful and necessary role in our society, and many students will surprise you," he said. "I paddled only one mischievous student in all my career and he turned out to be my neighbor in two places and became a successful construction contractor. Some of the worst trouble-makers are the ones most likely to come back to visit you!"
Among his former students are dozens of teachers, engineers, lawyers, nurses, doctors, dentists, veterinarians, a television anchor woman, the conductor of a big-city orchestra, an artist, several authors, a city manager, numerous airline pilots, a handful of PhDs and a White House communications specialist.

Mr. Westerman said he has no regrets about spending his entire working life in the classroom.
"If I had to wear myself out on something, I'd rather it be teaching than anything else," he said when I telephoned him with a belated thanks for all he did for me. "Teachers won't ever be paid enough. I sometimes had 47 students in a class. I never worked less than 60 hours a week. Some folks aren't cut out for it. I was."
He recalled that his first job after graduating with an engineering degree and serving in the Army during the Korean War was working for a big oil refinery.
"That place is all gone now, not a trace of it left, it's as if it had never existed for all those folks who once worked there," said Mr. Westerman. "Teaching isn't like that. Nobody can ever take that away. Your work lives on in every student you ever taught."

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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