By Calvin Trampleasure, 2023
- Chapter 1: New Ways and Big Days
- Chapter 2: RUSD Becomes WCCUSD
- Chapter 3: 4 Cs Adventure in Physical Education
- Chapter 4: The 4 Cs and 101 Ways to Praise
- Chapter 5: Washington Elementary, Richmond
- Chapter 6: Kindergarten Fire and Love
- Chapter 7: Kindergarten Years, Extended Day K
- Afterword: Something Unpredictable
New Ways and Big Days
Beginnings are full of adventure, uncertainty and bravery. A new start may come from a magnificent inspiration, a simple suggestion, or an accidental meeting. An unexplored path starts with a breath and a step. The first step, chance meeting, or planned interview that births in a new endeavor can start in a humble place. The simple nature of the place may give no hints to the spectacular life ahead full of a purpose or a passion.
In 1987, Pinole Middle School was a 1950’s-style school of simple and plain design. As the school population grew, portable classrooms were added on a playing field next to Appian Way, a few blocks from I-80 in Pinole, California.
As a bicycle racer in the 1970s-1980s, I’d ridden fast past this school many times on the way to the scenic “Snake Road” between the towns of Crockett and Martinez. This 60-mile training ride from Berkeley with free-spirited Berkeley Bicycle Club team members, was a favorite. Cycling along past the Carquinez Straits, and back home through Tilden Park brought the breath and sweat of life. The joy of fitness, friendship and camaraderie riding down an open road was etched in my soul. It left a longing to find a real and fun path for a profession after my bike racing career ended.
Little did I suspect that on a hot July day in 1987 I would find that next career. It began with a job interview at Pinole Middle School in a drab room.
Don Novak, a Richmond Unified School District (RUSD) administrator, sat in a suit and tie in a portable classroom off Apian Way. I arrived for my elementary teaching job interview a few minutes early on that fateful day. The nervousness of the moment overwhelmed all other feelings or thoughts. When my name was called, I sat down at a table across from Mr. Novak.
Mr. Novak, or Don as he asked me to call him, shook my hand and I gave him my resume. It included student-teaching experiences at Hawthorne and Hillcrest Elementary Schools in Oakland, and Wilson School in San Leandro. It highlighted some of my experiences earning a multiple-subjects teaching credential at California State University-Hayward. At the bottom of the resume were a few cycling career accomplishments such as three-time winner of the Northern California Road Race Championship and two-year manager of the ABC Avocet-Miyata national-caliber racing team in 1985-86.
Prepared to talk about my approach to classroom management, or my preferred curriculum in language arts instruction, I was truly surprised by Don’s first question.
“So, tell me about this bicycle racing,” he began.
I was happy and comfortable talking about racing days in the USA and in Europe, and my passion must have shown. Don listened to a few of my favorite racing stories and asked questions about them. Then he moved on to the next topic.
“So, how about them ‘9ers?” was the next question.
Don lived in SF and was a big fan of the 49ers. I proceeded to tell him about my days as a beer vendor at 49er games, and how I watched Joe Montana and the team win games with dramatic plays in the final minutes of a game. The pass to Dwight Clark being particularly famous.
“I have just the job for you!” Don exclaimed, about 20 minutes into the interview. Nothing about my year of student teaching had come up!
“Richmond Unified is hiring teachers for P.E. preparation time instruction,” he explained.
“You would be assigned to three or four schools and teach physical education for 35 minutes, twice a week, to groups of fourth-sixth graders. You would have both our ‘tougher’ flat land schools and the hill schools,” Don explained. “You might have to move from one school to another on the same day for different classes, you can set the schedule the best you can working with the different principals.”
“But I don’t have any training in physical education teaching,” I replied. I had not taken even one P.E. class in college.
“You are perfect for this job,” Don said. “You have the love of sport and all your experience and knowledge of bike racing and football will serve you well.”
This was an important lesson in teaching! First, find out what your students are interested in, and give them a chance to “go for it.” In 1994, I earned an MS in Education from Cal State Hayward and my thesis was “Student-Centered Curriculum.” At Pinole Middle, in 1987, Mr. Novak was giving me a chance to do just that – be myself and learn as I went in the teaching world.
My initial surprise about the “P.E. prep teacher job” faded as I realized it might be just right. Being outside with 33 kids was more appealing to a free-spirited soul than sitting with 33 students inside a small classroom. Getting students to move in fun ways and getting paid to do so might be just the gig for me.
I signed the RUSD contract to teach! I would start in August, 1987 teaching physical education at Madera, Lincoln and Castro Elementary Schools in RUSD.
It was not until 2002, and No Child Left Behind (or “Whole Child Left Behind” or “Every Child Left on Their Behind”), that I was required to take college courses in physical education.
Ana Sousa, a district administrator, called in 2002 to let me know I would need to earn 20 units of college course work to become a “highly qualified teacher” in my subject. Appreciating the irony, Ana said that my fifteen years of successful physical education experience made me “highly qualified” yet the new NCLB required the course work.
My first course in 2002 was a 3-unit class at Contra Costa College called “Introduction to Physical Education.” Over a few years I accumulated the required 20 units to earn a supplemental credential in physical education.
Often it is the many hoops that teachers are required to jump through that drive them away from the profession. The institutional requirements may be initially somewhat well-intended. However bureaucratic, politician and “bean-counter” decisions cause countless creative and caring people to leave teaching.
“I didn’t know they piled it that high,” my dad would say when I was young. Dad taught one year and left the field of teaching just after I was born in 1958. The “piles” were small then too. He must be rolling over in his urn at this point!
My mom made it through many years teaching in Maryland, Kansas City, Berkeley, Stockton and Oakland public schools. She successfully taught physical education in all those places. In her early 50s she earned an adapted physical education degree and taught at Ralph Bunche School in Oakland USD and elsewhere. All her jobs gave her freedom to create activities appropriate for her students. This freedom is key to both longevity and satisfaction in a teaching career. She had creative teachers that she learned from and talked about until the day she died. Finally, it was the love Mom had for her students that made her a “highly qualified teacher.” And, no child was left on their behind!
As I write this, the Covid-19 health crisis is apparently winding down a bit in the USA after a few years. However, the other current health crisis stemming from inactivity and poor choices in diet remains largely unaddressed by public schools across this country. Childhood obesity, heart disease deaths, asthma, and diabetes are at crisis levels. Maybe the fervor and intensity of which the Covid-19 crisis was tackled could be redirected to a coordinated program to bring healthy vegetarian lunches to all schools, and a physical education teacher to all elementary schools. Less screen time and more play time are essential to the health of us all. Tech is taking over the schools, while it should be taking a back seat to physical and social development of our children, especially at the elementary level.
My dad called us the “plugged in” generation back in the 1980s, before the internet and streaming of all forms of “entertainment” and “educational apps.”
Growing up in Berkeley in the 1960s, my parents allowed just five hours per week of television for their three children. Berkeley parents called TV “the boob tube.” We used our imaginations to play and pass time, we learned to create our own visions, not be guided by the television. We were not so exposed to the “keeping up with the Joneses” world where advertising sold the idea that buying things brought happiness. Health was happiness, and it was free; except for the price of apples or a box of raisins, or a baseball, a kite or a bike.
As a child, I would grind wheat berries by hand to make fresh flour for my mom’s homemade bread. Yes, we baked cookies with margarine and sugar, but ate fruits and vegetables daily. Soda was never in our diet, water was a staple. We got exercise daily playing in the back yard and riding bikes or running around our neighborhood.
If only more children had healthier habits established early, our national and global health crisis would gradually decline. If only our public schools would prioritize the physical health of children.
Kurt Vonnegut observed early in the 1980s that we are no longer a society, we are an audience. Imagine children engaged physically in learning at an early age, on a daily basis. Learning by doing instead of watching. That was John Gatto’s outlook teaching in NYC public schools, and he won the NYC Teacher-of-the-Year three times in the 1980s, and New York State Teacher-of-the-Year one time. “Primary experience is the best teacher” coupled with “there are as many learning styles as there are fingerprints” were at the heart of his core standards.
With great excitement, and a bit of fear, I took that first job in RUSD. My love of moving and playing outdoors was to become my livelihood. My first year salary would be $21,500 and much more than I made racing bikes, selling beer, working at the Nature Company, or other jobs! It was a job I believed in, and I fully dove into the task in August of 1987.
Physical Education Teaching in RUSD, 1987-90
Seven cities were included in Richmond Unified School District: Richmond, El Cerrito, Pinole, El Sobrante, Kensington, San Pablo and Hercules. In 1991, after a bankruptcy, it would be renamed West Contra Costa Unified School District, a more apt name.
Don Novak told me of some supplies for physical education prep teachers in San Pablo. In mid-August 1987, I drove to Vista Hills School and was directed to a small room where these supplies were stored. The equipment included an old green Army surplus parachute, some rather worn basketballs and kick balls, a few catcher’s masks and few baseball bats and softballs. As I searched around for curriculum guides, none were found.
Fortunately, I had read some of the New Games Book in my classes at Hayward State. Included were games that required no or little equipment. Crows and Cranes, Everybody’s It and other tag games were a simple place to start. The heart of the New Games approach was to get everyone moving with no winners and no losers, just lots of activity and fun.
Those new games were the genesis of my physical education curriculum that first year. Added to the new games, would be running races, a few kinds of dodge ball and, of course, some basketball and baseball.
As promised I got both “tough flat land schools” and “hill schools” that year: Madera, Lincoln and Castro. Madera is in the El Cerrito Hills near a golf course. Lincoln is at Sixth and Chancellor Streets, in the part of Richmond with drive-by shootings and plenty of gang activity in the 1980s. Castro was in the flatlands of El Cerrito and was the district’s model “full inclusion” school where students with disabilities, or special needs, were part of regular classroom learning.
Lincoln School
The “tough” inner-city schools can thrive with an excellent principal. The best principals hire and retain great teachers and create environments where all teachers feel part of a positive team. Lincoln School had one of these leaders when I arrived in August of 1987. I got lucky to see this team of teachers work with Mr. Henderson for two years. There were six 4th-6th grades and I saw each class twice a week for 35-minute periods.
Mr. Henderson would tell teachers, “You are doing an amazing job, if there is anything you need let me know.” While there was an adopted curriculum, Lincoln teachers got to be themselves too. Creativity was encouraged and supported with RSP teachers.
Scott Buse, a bilingual kindergarten teacher at Lincoln, recalled Bill Henderson in glowing terms.
“Bill led me, a faculty and students by example,” Scott recalled. “It was what he did, not what he said, that showed us what was important.”
“He modeled care and investment for all at Lincoln Elementary University,” Scott continued. “Actions spoke louder than words.”
Scott wanted to create an environment of care for his kindergarten classes at Lincoln. Some days Scott had doubts about his impact at the school.
“You don’t know the good things you are doing,” Bill Henderson told Scott, and all the teachers, “have faith.”
Scott continued, “The things I learned from Bill served me as a son, a father, a husband and a person in all areas of my life.”
“Like a lucky penny in my pocket,” Scott added, “I still carry these words from Bill Henderson in my mind and heart.” Scott recited the Lincoln Elementary University pledge, written by Mr. Bill Henderson:
I’m proud to be me, I also see, you’re just as proud to be you! We might look at things a bit differently, but lots of good people do It’s just human nature, so I will respect you, for being as human as I We’ll get as we give, if we live and let live And we’ll all get along if we try I’m proud to be me, and I also see You’re just as proud to be you, it’s true, you’re just as proud to be you!
Kaye Burnside taught fifth grade at Lincoln that year. Ms. Burnside would later go on to be a WCCUSD principal, and become superintendent of schools in Compton. Like Scott, she carried “Mr. Henderson lessons” everywhere in life. She often spoke glowingly of Mr. Henderson.
One day on the Lincoln yard the end-of-school bell rang at 2:42. Ms. Burnside’s class was playing dodgeball and ignored the bell. The 33 fifth graders just kept playing well after the bell rang. The game was more fun and interesting than going home. I took that as a sign I was on the right track and play really was the “exultation of the possible.”
Mr. Henderson could disengage hostility between students with humor and a genuine look of caring.
One time a 2nd grade girl came into the Lincoln office right after the final bell.
“Mr. Henderson, Tyrone gonna beat me up, he waitin’ for me down the street,” the girl said.
“Well, you just tell Tyrone that if he is not nice to you, I will have to go up to the top of the school building and jump off it,” Mr. Henderson told her with a smile. “You go tell Tyrone that Lincoln students are kind!”
The girl came back to the office few minutes later. “Mr. Henderson, Tyrone says he don’t wanna see ya hurt, so he left me alone.” Then, she headed home.
Mr. Henderson came to RUSD from South Carolina in the 1960s. He had been the first black vice-principal in the district at Sheldon School. Teachers who worked with him smile and tell Mr. Henderson stories that illustrate the love he had for the teaching world. He was principal at Lincoln for seven years and teacher turnover was not an issue, everyone appreciated the community, love and camaraderie.
One non-teacher employee at Lincoln was a young-looking 23 year-old black man. Darnell had been a world-class 800 meter runner, now he was hired by RUSD to be an informant at Lincoln about drug dealing issues in the neighborhood. He was known and loved by the Lincoln students and played and talked with them at recess and in classrooms.
A few sixth graders were being offered money ($100 a day) by drug dealers in the neighborhood to stand watch on street corners, and missed school to be part of gangs. Darnell was to help these kids avoid temptation and pick the stay-in-school path. Darnell’s fitness was also a shining example of how to be healthy and athletic!
I was 29 and just finishing my bike racing career in September of 1987, and had just won my final race, the Santa Rosa Criterium. Darnell and I connected as athletes. I asked him if he wanted to run a mile race around the playground at recess, just to model the fun of fitness and competition. He agreed and we ran the mile in front of all the 4-6th graders one recess. I bet I gave him a run for his money, and I bet he took it easy on me so I didn’t look too bad. Our mile times were just over 5 minutes. (If we had raced on bikes, the tables might have been reversed.)
I did ride my bike to each of my schools that year, and for all of my career. It was about a 14-mile round trip ride to Lincoln from my Berkeley home, and just about a 6-mile round-trip to Castro or Madera schools. So, I would add some miles after school, and stay fit. It was a good example for all my 600 or so students to see an adult using a bike for fun and to commute.
Kids in the Lincoln neighborhood lived in poverty. Most of them qualified for free school lunches. The second year I was there, a lock was added to the dumpster. I asked Dion, the custodian, why and he told me many adults from the neighborhood were going in to the dumpster for thrown-away lunch food. Eating old fish, hot dogs or other perishable food might make someone sick and that was a liability to the district. So, the lock was added.
Charlene, a skinny fifth grade girl at Lincoln, set the pull-up record for girls that year. She did eight pull-ups. I would ride my bike home and see her across the street playing tetherball on the stop sign at Sixth Street and Chancellor. One day I stopped to ask her about the tetherball. She told me the “rope” was some extra phone cord (no cell phones then!) her mom gave her. The tether ball was rolled up newspaper, wrapped up with some duct tape. She would wrap the end of the phone cord to the top of the stop sign, using her eight-pull-up arms to get up. She played tetherball with friends most every day after school.
Castro Elementary
Castro Elementary was on Donal Street in El Cerrito. It is now remodeled and renamed Korematsu Middle School. When I arrived there to be the physical education teacher in 1987, Castro was RUSD’s shining example of full inclusion. Special needs students were mainstreamed into regular education classrooms. Caring and capable teacher aides helped kids in wheelchairs to class. Partnerships and friendships among the special needs kids, aides, classroom teachers and principals was clearly on display.
Adapted physical education (APE) teachers Jocelyn Pare and Geri Miner worked with the special needs students on the playground and in a Multi-purpose room (an old US military Quonset hut relocated from Treasure Island).
Jocelyn and Geri were excellent APE teachers, and shared their wealth of knowledge with me that year. Most clearly they had a love of their students and a clear purpose in life. I was fortunate to have been assigned to Castro that year! There were just five upper grade classes there, and I taught each class for the two 35-minute periods per week.
Castro students were ethnically very mixed. The economic levels of families in the neighborhood varied greatly. It reminded me of Jefferson School on Sacramento in Berkeley where I attended Kindergarten-fourth grade.
I used New Games, and included some dodge ball games and basketball activity. The Castro students, as all kids, enjoyed getting out of the classroom and playing outdoors. I learned each day a bit more about teaching physical education. Experience and reflection were the best teachers. I learned much that first year and I figured things out day by day.
Madera School
Madera School was high in the El Cerrito hills near the Mira Vista Golf course. This golf course was one of the first in California to allow Jewish, Black and minority members. I taught just four classes there my first two years in RUSD. One day a week I would go from teaching classes at Madera in the morning to classes in the afternoon at Lincoln, riding my bike down the hill and into Richmond along Cutting Blvd to Sixth Street.
The playground at Madera had the best view of any in RUSD. There were views of both the Oakland-SF and Golden Gate bridges. Mt. Tamalpais rose up north of the Golden Gate. Madera had just 220 or so students in 1987-89. In 2020, there were about 540 students. The school grew in population after Castro closed and became a middle school and two sixth grade classes were added to the school in 2010.
In those first two years of RUSD I was fortunate to have such interesting and talented people around. I was encouraged to keep learning and trying new things. It was a perfect start to a career to have varied experiences at Lincoln, Madera and Castro schools.
So, I submitted the paperwork for a year leave. I knew how to live frugally from my years as a bike bum. Francesca, who got me into the teaching world, saw me one day on an Oakland street and said, “Wow, what happened to you, you don’t look so good.”
I told her about the fatigue and year leave and she suggested going back to Cal-State Hayward and getting a masters in something that interested me. She said I needed a break from the classroom, but doing some reading and writing about teaching might be really healthy. Plus it would move me along on the RUSD pay scale with more professional development units.
Francesca was right! I took many interesting classes and completed a “Student-Centered Curriculum” M.A. project. The thesis was inspired by John Gatto, three-time NYC Teacher of the Year, and NY State Teacher of the Year in 1985.
“Primary experience is the best teacher,” was the heart of his approach. “There are as many learning styles as there are fingerprints,” was another of his core beliefs. I intuitively agreed with those two ideas.
As a child my middle name might have been “Recess.” Now, as an adult, I took a year-long recess from classroom teaching.
I returned to interview students at Bayview and other schools to see just what brought joy to learning for elementary students, and added this to my thesis. I read books by Jonathan Kozol, Alfie Kohn and others.
My mother gave me the book Revolution from Within, by Gloria Steinem. “Remember the flip side of the golden rule,” Steinem wrote, “treat yourself as well as you treat others.” Today that is called “self-care.”
Maxine’s words blew in my mind that year, like wind moving various leaves and making the air much more clear. Steinem helped me understand more and keep a balance.
By the time I earned the Cal State Hayward M.S., I knew I wanted a physical education prep teacher job. Don Novak had been right, it was perfect for me. Those four walls of classrooms made me claustrophobic and the big sky and sunshine and trees and grass everywhere was best for my soul. Playing with a purpose and freedom to create was going to restore my soul. Maxine told me to “figure out your true place in the teaching world” and I had figured it out.
WCCUSD, West Contra Costa Unified School District, (renamed after the bankruptcy) posted elementary physical education prep positions. In the summer of 1993 Susie van der Veer hired me for this position. In August of 1993 I was assigned to Dover, King, Castro and Sheldon schools. I was back to teaching with renewed energy and purpose.