Long-time educator Chuck Flagg’s June retirement still has not
hit him, or his students.
Gilroy – Long-time educator Chuck Flagg’s June retirement still has not hit him, or his students.
Yet, when schools starts in August, the patient, soft-spoken literature and history teacher at Gilroy and Mt. Madonna Continuation high schools will not return to his desk for the first time in 39 years.
The 62-year-old, who writes a weekly religion column for the Dispatch, retired in part to spend time traveling, reading and writing, volunteering and visiting his twin 7-year-old nieces in San Martin.
However, the main reason he left was that he was burnt out.
“You get tired of standing up in front of the classroom and trying to get (students) to do what they don’t want to do,” he said. “I don’t want to tell (them) to put that phone away one more time.”
Flagg started as a remedial reading teacher at Gilroy High School in 1968, when it educated 1,200 students on IOOF Avenue.
In his 24 years there and at the new building on 10th Street, he taught history of Western civilization, advanced composition, English II, and – his favorite class – an elective for juniors and seniors titled Bible as literature.
“He was very professional and he always had a good sense of humor,” said Greg Guerin, a long-time English teacher at the high school.
Increased enrollment and curriculum reforms in the 1980s forced administrators to scrap electives in favor of core classes that taught information on state standardized tests, Flagg said. These changes were motivations to leave the school in 1992.
“It became uncomfortably large,” he said. “Because of that, it became very rigid. It was like a big factory.”
Flagg transferred to Mt. Madonna, which did not have a formal schedule of classes at the time.
Rather, students had assignments that they would work on at their leisure, with teachers available for support during certain hours.
Increasing district enrollment and standardized testing caught up with Flagg at Mt. Madonna about five years ago.
Teachers are now expected to teach a full day of 50-minute classes that are focused on information found on state tests, he said.
“You keep them busy for the allotted time period,” he said. “It became a mini GHS.”
Flagg supports the push to educate every child and understands that standardized tests can be a useful tool to ensure quality education.
However, the educational policies and tests ignore that students have fundamental innate and learned differences that they bring to the classroom.
“Some kids want to learn and they come and it doesn’t matter what you do, they’ll learn,” he said. “Other kids have so many problems dealing with family, it’s almost impossible to get their attention. And then there’s a whole bunch of them that are immature. They want to have fun. School gets in the way.”
These differences are not reasons to get angry or frustrated with students, Flagg said.
“You don’t get mad at water because it’s wet,” he said.
Instead, the differences should prompt educators to reevaluate the unrealistic expectations they have for students, Flagg said.
“You can’t convince (students) that algebra and geometry are going to be good for them if they want to be a truck driver,” he said. “I think we need to honor all the people in the community who don’t have a college education but who provide useful services for us.”
That he disagrees with some of the current trends and fellow educators in academia does not mean he does not respect them.
He knows first-hand that educators believe in bettering the lives of their pupils, and pay for it with such hard work that some teachers, like him, get tired.
“It’s the kind of job that can suck out every single minute of your time that you’re willing to give to it,” Flagg said.
