Chalk it up

William Lobdell

Mrs. Newman is the kind of first-grade teacher who spent last summer

driving across country on her own dime to attend an educator’s

conference in Nashville -- despite the fact that she was retiring

this June.

“I didn’t hesitate to go, no, sir,” she said, using a favorite

expression. “I can always learn something new.”

Marge Newman hangs up her chalk next month after 48 years on the

job, mostly teaching first-graders at Mariners and Newport elementary

schools. In her long educational wake, she leaves behind about 1,200

grateful former students, thousands of satisfied parents and hundreds

of admiring colleagues.

This afternoon, some of those touched by Mrs. Newman are throwing

a retirement party for her at Mariners Elementary from 3:30 to 5 p.m.

The public is invited.

Mrs. Newman is a teacher retiring in full stride. She is

sprinting, not limping, across the finish line. She’d never talk to

me again if I told you her age, but here’s a hint. Take a look at

her, make your best guess and then add 15 years. That will get you

close.

The years haven’t slowed her. She still spends most of her

classroom time at Mariners either sitting on the carpet with her kids

or in those tiny first-grader chairs. She arrives at school by 7 a.m.

and usually doesn’t go home before dark. Parents who want to talk

with her on weekends often can find Mrs. Newman in her classroom on

Saturday or Sunday, catching up on work.

She’s as old-school as bobby socks and low-top basketball

sneakers. Mrs. Newman believes in fundamentals and never let passing

teaching fads get her too far off course. When phonics went out of

style for a while, she continued to teach them, ignoring

administrators’ edicts and using books she bought with her own money.

She’s been threatening to retire for the past half-dozen years or

so but always got talked out of it by parents, students, teachers and

administrators. Her class is stacked with little brothers and sisters

of siblings who have already had Mrs. Newman. For the parents, no

other teacher was a possibility.

And for each of those last six years, her accountant has sat down

with her and explained how, because of quirks in the retirement

system, she was losing money by continuing to work. She didn’t care.

Her heart was never really into retirement, and I suspect it isn’t

really now.

Mrs. Newman tears up every time she talks about leaving. At the

Mariners annual holiday concert she directs, she couldn’t turn around

to acknowledge the applause because she was crying so hard.

But she wants to spend more time with her husband, Jim, who

retired nine years ago and has patiently waited for her to finish up

with her life’s work. They’re building a second home in Palm Springs,

and have vacations planned for the Panama Canal, New Zealand,

Australia, Asia and the “rest of the world.”

She says she’ll have to learn to cook again, as well as shop for

groceries. These are chores her husband had taken over while she kept

working. She also hopes to do more gardening and finish five daily

crossword puzzles instead of two.

But in the next breath, she vows she’ll be back at Mariners,

volunteering in first-grade classrooms. And she wonders if she’ll

accept substitute teaching assignments.

“They’re so short-handed, I probably will,” she says.

She’ll be back because she wants to keep teaching children to

read. It’s the reason why she’s teaches first-graders.

“I want them to love books as much as I do,” she says.

Plus, she enjoys the honesty of the age, especially from the boys

who have a little bit of the devil in them.

“They put a little excitement in the classroom, and when they do

something wrong, they fess up to it you right away,” she says. “I

remember the good students and I remember the trouble makers.”

An introvert by nature, Mrs. Newman doesn’t like the fuss that’s

being made over her retirement. She’s asked, as her retirement gift,

that books be bought for the new Mariners Public Library. And if it

were up to her, she would simply slip out of Room No. 3 on June 18

and walk quietly into retirement.

But she admits the constant goodbye hugs, notes, presents and

phone calls over the past school year have served a purpose.

“I always wanted to make some important contribution to society,”

she said, more tears falling from her eyes. “Now I guess I have.”

* WILLIAM LOBDELL, former editor of the Daily Pilot, is a reporter

with the Los Angeles Times. Three of his children have been students

of Mrs. Newman, including Matthew who’s in her class this year.