In contrast to my
practice teaching experience, I found my first year at Borel fulfilling and very
satisfying. During my second year there, the principal brought in Charlie Judd,
a buddy of his that he socialized with. I tried like hell to work with him, but
the guy was driving me nuts. He was a social studies teacher, but he wanted to
teach PE. Why, I'll never know. He couldn't demonstrate, and knew nothing about
teaching the technique of a given sport. I would even sit down with him to help
plan the curriculum for the following week, and all he would do was read a
newspaper. I complained to the principal about all this, so what does the
principal do? He has me transferred to North Shoreview Elementary School the
following school year, 1956-1957. Boy, was I ticked off.
Shoreview was run by the most democratic principal I ever knew. Mr. Gattman
let everyone do their thing as long as it met academic standards. He was loved
by both parents and faculty. I, for one, really enjoyed my year there. I had a
lot of success with my afterschool teams and the parents were very supportive.
That Christmas, I was their Santa Claus and came to school riding on a big fire
truck.
To make a little extra money, I started working for Murray Lumber Company
selling fencing material. There were a lot of new homes being built in the area,
so I was quite busy in the evenings and on weekends. Somehow though, I could
always find time to play with my kids out in the street.
When I was sent to Shoreview, they also sent along two other PE teachers. One
of them had to go into the classroom, but at the end of the year, one of us had
to go to Meadow Heights Elementary. The Principal flipped a coin and I lost. So
it was Meadow Heights for the year 1957-1958.
On my first day at Meadow Heights, the Principal, Mr. Puckett wanted me to
take care of all the supplies, run errands for the teachers, and be the Safety
Patrol Counselor for about 30 kids. I told him that I'd come there to teach PE
and that if he wanted those jobs done, he should do them himself. Outside of
that confrontation, my three years there were really good.
I had the most innovative program in the district. Whenever we had meetings
of the PE teachers, I was always asked to explain what I was doing and how to do
it. For the little guys, I introduced relays, jump rope contests and other
similar activities. For prizes, I'd go downtown and buy jacks for the little
girls and tops for the boys. This later developed into district-wide meets.
I was very content there except when it rained. I'd have to take the kids
into a classroom. I missed the gymnasium, so I asked for a transfer, and the
next year, 1960-1961, they sent me to the brand new Bayside Junior High School
in Shoreview. Bayside had an adequate gymnasium, one that the kids looked
forward to when it rained. The other PE teachers, Dave Peterson, Dick Renwick
and I along with Fritzie Henning set up a program that taught the kids a new
skill or technique every day.
Because our house on Byron Avenue was in the Shoreview District, Steven was
transferred from College Park to Bayside that year, so I made sure that I didn't
have him in PE or on my afterschool teams. I guess he survived having his
"old man" on the faculty.
I was responsible for getting more basketball courts, horizontal bars and
tumbling mats. We were the only school that had 60 basketballs, 30 bats, and
dozens of balls. Whenever I found something the kids should have, I went after
it by pressuring the principal. You don't learn how to bounce a ball if there's
only one ball and thirty kids. Well that was all well and good until Charlie
Judd at Borel went back to the classroom where he belonged. This created a
vacancy at Borel and one of us had to go there. The principal was going to send
me because he said that every time I wanted something, I would back him up
against the wall to get it. I said OK, but first, I wanted to talk to Mr. Hiler,
the principal at Borel. He's the one that had transferred me five years earlier.
I went over to Borel and told him I would come back, but there was just one
thing I wanted to know: Did he make a mistake when he kept Charlie Judd instead
of me? He admitted that he had, and would like me to come back. I said "OK,
on that basis, I'm your man".
A good principal is a must if a school is going to have any credibility.
He'll surround himself with good instructors and back them up whenever a
discipline problem arises. In spite of the way he'd treated me earlier at Borel,
Hiler was a good principal. The PE people were always on the firing line during
recess and noontime duty, and generally this was the time that the kids would
goof off. I personally was a very strong disciplinarian and would nip trouble in
the bud before it started, but if I got there after it started, I'd take them
into the office where I knew they'd get what was coming to them. If it was
serious, they'd get suspended for from one to three days. We ran a tight school.
The kids respected us and the parents loved us.
In 1962, Charlie Owens was appointed PE director for the San Mateo Elementary
and Junior High Schools. His job was to coordinate the PE curriculum and the
afterschool sports programs. After his appointment, while I was still at Borel,
he gave me an additional assignment. I was to organize and coach a San Mateo
School District Track Team. For my players, I got to visit all the elementary
and junior high schools in San Mateo, picking the best of the lot. I worked with
the kids Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays during the school year when meets
were held. Charlie Owens wasn't too sharp, but he did get the district to give
us a bus to haul the kids around for out-of-town track meets.
As time went on, the district-wide team program got so got so big that we had
to add two more coaches. Boy, those kids were something. We had them join the
Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) so that they could run against their own age groups
in organized meets. The groups were for ages 9 to 11, 12 to 13, and 14 to 16. We
set more national records than any club in the US. After we got more coaches, I
chose to work with the girls, 9 to 13; there was another coach for the boys 9 to
13 and later on, when the high school kids joined in, Ed Parker coached them.
When they turned 14, my girls went on to other school district coaches. The
girls felt that this group of coaches worked them too many hours and too many
days each week. As a result, many of the girls were dropping out of the sports
program entirely. I got ticked off and started the independent Girls Sports
Unlimited Club of San Mateo. We had our club join the AAU and participate in AAU
meets with other schools and clubs, state-wide.
The parents went along with me and furnished uniforms and transportation for
our new club to all the meets. We went as far north as Humboldt State College
and as far south as Fresno and Bakersfield. After a couple of years, I saw that
I was getting so damned involved that it wasn't fair to my wife or my kids, so I
decided to quit. Some of the kids I had coached became outstanding in high
school and college. A couple of them went to the Olympics. Incidentally, Ed
Parker also went to the Olympics as the head coach for the girls.
The more units of post-graduate work I had, the higher the pay. I was always
taking courses either at San Francisco State, San Jose State, or Stanford. I had
graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a Special Secondary in PE, authorizing me
to teach PE in high school and junior college. I was allowed to teach in
elementary, provided I pursued a General Elementary Credential.
I got my General Elementary Credential in 1955, then a General Secondary
Credential in 1958, followed by a masters degree in physical education from San
Francisco State in 1970. I was even thinking of getting a doctorate; but what
the heck, I had no inclination to teach anything other than at the elementary
level.
Bernie Wagner, coach at San Mateo High asked me to come to San Mateo High and
later to the College of San Mateo to assist in track. I felt that the
instruction I was giving in my PE classes at the elementary level was more
important and that the kids were more teachable in the lower grades. Bernie
ended up at Oregon State making twice the money, but I've never regretted my
decision. Mom was a hundred percent behind me. I must have had the respect of
the kids because 15 years later, they were inviting me to their weddings.
I'll never forget one little guy. He went to the principal's office and asked
to be transferred into Mr. Bingham's class. He said that my classes were more
structured. This frail little kid, who I felt was sure to become a homosexual,
couldn't chin himself once, yet he wanted to be with Mr. Bingham, who called his
kids "hamburgers," "turkeys," and "pucky hocks"
whenever they failed to execute a skill (doing it) or a technique (how you do
it) correctly. As it turned out, it wasn't me that he wanted; it was an
eighth-grade teacher aide that I had. His name was Anthony Gerranios, who was on
my flag football team. I gave him four or five of the little guys who were meek
and couldn't care less about playing contact sports. My instructions to Anthony
were to keep the kids in our physical fitness area to build up their strength,
and to bring them out whenever we were practicing a skill or technique. These
kids hung on to him as if he was their father. He got more work out of them than
I ever could. And by gosh, when it came to a test, they all got B's.
I always graded the kids on four things counting 25 percent for each item: 1)
A written test on sport with 25 questions; 2) A skill test, such as how to throw
a football and make it spiral; 3) A technique test such as how to punt a spiral,
but not for distance; 4) Attitude, cooperation and effort. It was no problem for
anyone to get a "B" with a little effort. You may be surprised that
some of my better athletes ended up with a "C" while some of the
non-athletes got a "B". As the youngsters moved up the following year,
their tests became more difficult. It took a lot of testing and paperwork, but
it was fair and the kids knew what to do if they wanted a better grade.
On rainy days, I'd set up the gym with stations. Each station was either a
parallel bar, a horse, a balance beam, a set of uneven bars, a horizontal bar, a
set of tumbling mats or a set of jump ropes. I would post a list of activities
that they were to perform at each station, and every five minutes, they would
rotate. I found that this beat the heck out of playing War or Bombardment, which
was mainly throwing volley balls at each other.
One year, all of the principals were asked to grade each teacher on certain
aspects of how well they were teaching, etc. Well, Mr. Hiler hadn't forgotten
how I made him apologize for letting me go a few years back. He gave me the
lowest marks possible. When I got a copy of his appraisal, I went in and told
him that if I were a principal with guts, and I had a teacher with that
appraisal, I'd sure as hell get rid of him. "How in hell can you justify
keeping me here?"
"Well", he said, "I can probably raise some of them."
Before he could continue, I walked out. The following year, he was gone; they
moved him up to administration.
In came Mr. William Kramer, a real sharp principal who knew what he was
doing. The first thing he did was get rid of all the deadwood; teachers who, he
felt, weren't getting the job done. He either transferred them, or made it so
tough on them that they retired. He made it his business to know what was being
taught and how it was being taught.
One of his pet projects was to "Teach to Goals" and at the end of
each semester, to see how closely the goals had been achieved. I told him that
in the PE Department, we'd be spending too much time on one goal and wouldn't be
able to reach the others. Nevertheless we set up goals for each sport that we
wanted the kids to learn. For instance, I figured that I could teach 75 percent
of the students how to make a correct lay-up in basketball. I attained 83
percent, but my goals for the left-handed lay-up, the hook shot, and the jump
shot all fell short.
As the semester went on, the principal seemed to recognize the difficulty in
applying his approach to the PE classes. The next semester, we were back to
doing it my way. I could see though, that if you didn't set your goals very
high, the desired results could be attained, but the grades would be inflated.
That was also the year that the Superintendent cut out After school sports. I
got hold of three of my parents that had kids on my basketball team and boy, did
they do a job on him. He was a music major in college. Mr. Cookson and his wife
led the charge. They set up a meeting that the Superintendent had to attend and
jumped right down his throat. We got After school Sports reinstated and Doctor
Andes was replaced by the school board the following year.
During the month that our After school sports were canceled, I got hold of
Mike Henderson, our janitor at the school, and asked him to take over my
basketball team and keep it sharp. When the After school Sports were reinstated,
the kids never missed a step. We ended up winning the Burlingame Tournament and
also the Palo Alto Tournament.
Scott knows Mike Henderson very well. Every Tuesday night, I kept the gym
open for adults to play basketball and they used to really go at it. Busby, a
friend of Scott's, used to be a regular, as well as Scotty's girlfriend's
brother. They were all nice; they even let me get a little playing time in.