Making the Grade: His own 'Field of Dreams'

Making the Grade: Paul Tamburello
A monthly column in the Brookline TAB

His own 'Field of Dreams'
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

On June 21, I'll be passing away. Yep, slipping into a dimension called "retired." I'm not sure whether time will become compressed, extended or stand still for a while. But it's going to march on in some form and I'll be in step in a new parade. I keep thinking of baseball analogies when I reflect on the change. Perhaps it's the unique combination of individual and team effort, tactical and strategic planning, patience and assertiveness, that are inherent in both teaching and in baseball.

For the past year, one image persistently floats into my imagination, a baseball analogy lifted from the movie "Field of Dreams." Following his own dream, the main character builds an improbable baseball field beside a corn field in the middle of America. "If you build it, they will come," he's been told in his dream. He builds, and they do come. Three years ago, before I walked into the personnel office and handed Maureen Flynn my retirement papers, I heard a message to start building toward my own future.

One of the film's sequence keeps playing in my mind like an instant replay on the Jumbotron. Ballplayers of the past, veterans in full uniform, magically enter the playing field, play a game, then return into the high-as-an-elephant's-eye corn fields surrounding the outfield of the country ballpark. Their images disappear as they pass into another dimension, destination unknown. Memories of them in their heydays kick up dust on the diamond from time to time as the contemporary players, taking a breather in the dugout or playing cards on the team bus, recount a memorable play or an antic deed they remember.

I've always been on this side of the diamond, watching in awe as my veteran colleagues retired and wondering how their next innings would play out. In my mind's eye, I can still see them in their prime, creative, funny, occasionally irreverent, ready to deliver ideas to me in the clutch, and coach me whether to be patient or swing away for the fences.

After this September, I'll know where they went.

The game's changed since my first year. In 1970, the only machine in the teacher's room was a mimeograph machine. I'm surprised more teachers didn't die of blood poisoning from all the blue ink that stained our hands after one faulty attempt at filling the machine with spirit alcohol. If someone said eBay in the '70s, it might be taken as a place you'd visit in the Virgin Islands on a February vacation. If you mentioned Google, the only thing a teacher thought about was a large number trailed by a significant amount of zeros. A Dick Tracy wrist watch two-way walkie talkie was a fantasy. Cell phones, computers and satellite dishes were more likely to show up in a Robert Heinlein science fiction tale than your local store. Let's just say that in 1970, zeros and ones were just that, zeros and ones.

Teaching is one of the hardest things I've ever done. When I was a beginner, I struggled to figure it out. I eavesdropped on the veterans when they talked shop, and was relieved when my rookie questions weren't brushed away, but answered with a smile for the "kid." The curve balls I needed to learn how to hit included how to manage a class of kids, how to report to parents and how to know the difference between following my gut and following the instruction manual. In those early seasons, all I knew was that I was doing something really hard. When I wasn't holding on for dear life, I was enjoying it immensely because I knew I was doing something really important.

For the past 10 years, history has repeated itself as I've coached young teachers how to negotiate the curve balls of the trade. And for the past year, I've been busy learning new skills from the editor of a small newspaper in southeastern Massachusetts so I can become a "cub" newspaper reporter. I'm a rookie again.

In June, I'm going to shake hands with my teammates and pass away into the corn fields and on to a new field of dreams. I'm certain I'll be the oldest rookie on the new team of writers, and I know that I'll have to prove myself before I can write with the first stringers.

But, if I could learn how to become a good teacher, I can learn how to do anything.

Paul Tamburello is a writer and teacher who has taught in Brookline since 1970.