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Although he is hardly the gambling sort, Norm Anderson has survived more than his share of risky situations. The former lieutenant colonel piloted a helicopter across Vietnam’s combat fields in the 1960s. He remained in the Army for 22 years of dedicated service, teaching combat tactics to cadets at the prestigious West Point military college. But a military career, he reflects, never really suited him. “Maybe I wasn’t a very good solider,” he says. “I always sensed that I wanted to be somebody else.”
As one of four children in a single-parent family on a Minnesota farm, Anderson explains that he did not have many choices after high school. A scholarship to West Point provided his only opportunity for a college education. “If I hadn’t gone into the service,” he says, “I’d probably be pumping gas back in Minnesota right now.” The perils of an infantry career, however, did not prepare Anderson for the challenges he would face when, at age 45, he embarked on a second career as a math and computer science teacher. His own two children—high-school students at the time—tried to convince him that high school would be too tough for him. The students in the local public schools would not match the well-behaved cadets he was used to instructing. “I’m not much of a disciplinarian,” the soft–spoken teacher says, laughing at the irony. “My wife and I agree I haven’t been the enforcer in our family, and I’m not in the classroom, either.”
Anderson had a tough time selling himself as a public school teacher. "Everyone was afraid to take a chance on an old colonel from West Point," he says. The day before school started, Anderson finally received a call about an opening at an urban junior high school. "I'm sure I was the last person they called," he says chuckling. Anderson still remembers that five fist fights broke out in his homeroom and that food flew across the cafeteria during his first shift of lunch duty. A rough start gave way to 15 years of classroom experiences that Anderson describes as magical—literally and figuratively. Now a teacher at the James O'Neill High School in Highland Falls, New York, he uses everything he can to engage his high-school students: magic acts, card and dice tricks, puzzles, riddles, graphing calculators, and colorful projections. Math ought to be taught visually, he says. “When students can ‘see math,’ they’re much more able to grasp its practical applications.”
Today, Anderson can bet on his students' engagement and on his professional satisfaction. This year his entire 11th-grade math class registered to take calculus as an elective in their senior year—a choice so unlikely it would seem to have some hocus pocus behind it. Attempting to explain his students' growing interest in a subject so many of them have struggled with, Anderson says simply, “I love seeing my students every day.” He wonders if having a first career—maybe even a career
that did not suit him—makes him so much more appreciative for
the opportunities teaching offers. “I’m 60 years old, and I’m
asking myself, Will the magic ever leave?” About the Article
HGSE News, Harvard Graduate School of Education
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