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131 pages

English

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This is a true story of the “American Dream, which author John Schissler Jr. wishes would come true for everybody today. John Schissler, Jr. appropriately named this autobiography, I Teach; Therefore I Can, because he came to a country where he could. He earned a college degree, which enabled him to teach, an aspiration he had since his high school days. His parents had had only a 4th grade education in Croatia and, therefore, stressed for him the importance of an education.
Mr. Schissler’s love for teaching is the primary focus of this autobiography. Come along with his 32 years’ journey as he poignantly displays the art of his profession. If you think you know English rather well, then allow Mr. Schissler to take you on a fascinating language tour through Italy, Germany, and Great Britain. Follow this trilinguist’s destination to Newspeak, Doublespeak, and Textspeak. Watch this wordsmith, with a flair for fun, work on the curious nuances of the Latin, German, and English languages. Share in his levity for teaching and fondness for coaching, which he exhibited toward his students and athletes almost on a daily basis.
In his retirement, Schissler bemoans the lack of respectability for his beloved profession. People insist that education is the panacea for all of today’s societal ills. This seasoned teacher, John Schissler, demonstrates how not only is it a necessity for our society to thrive but also for our democracy to survive.

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Biography

Teacher

Autobiography

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Publié par	Xlibris US
Date de parution	18 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781669851981
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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I TEACH! THEREFORE, I CAN!

JOHN SCHISSLER JR.

Copyright © 2022 by John Schissler Jr.

Library of Congress Control Number:
2022919177
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-5200-1
Softcover
978-1-6698-5199-8
eBook
978-1-6698-5198-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/18/2022

Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com

844279

Dedicated to the teaching profession and the 9 Muses who were my lifelong guides.

CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
LESSON 1 I CAME, I SAW, I TAUGHT
It’s Fun-Damental
A Whirlwind Lesson In Latin
LESSON 2 IT’S ALSO GERMANE
It’s Fun-Damental
Famous German-Americans
LESSON 3 NATIVE LANGUAGE?
More English Anguish
It’s Fun-Damental
British English
LESSON 4 POTPOURRI, POR FAVOR !
LESSON 5 HISTORY THREEPEAT
Roman Empire
Migration Period
The Holy Roman Empire
War Stories
It’s Fun-Damental
LESSON 6 NEO-MYTHOLOGY
Signs Of The Zodiac
Business Logos
Psychology Today
Look To The Heavens
Myth & Lit 101
What In Gods’ Name?
LESSON 7 MOTHER EARTH
LESSON 8 STUDENT/ATHLETES
Boys & Girls Soccer
Gymnastics
Track & Field
Reaching The Heights Of An Olympian
LESSON 9 MY NINE MUSES & ALMA MATERS
LESSON 10 COMPUTER VS. TEACHER: NEWSPEAK
Textspeak
The Conversation Of Death

EPILOGUE
Retirement
BIBLIOGRAPHY

40 PHOTOS
#1 First Year at Marshall
#2 Capitol Building
#3 Pantheon in Rome
#4 Jefferson Monument
#5 Keystone
#6 Dollar Bill
#7 Beer Stein
#8 Gothic Script
#9 Hitler’s Mein Kampf
#10 Germany Map
#11 Two Flags
#12 United Kingdom
#13 World Map
#14 Language Tree
#15 Roman Empire
#16 Holy Roman Empire
#17 British Empire
#18 Pegasus Horse
#19 Greek Alphabet
#20 Gods and Goddesses
#21 Zodiac Animals
#22 Business Logos
#23 Santa Bill
#24 Mother Earth
#25 Biotic Pyramid
#26 The Magic Canteen
#27 Soccer Medal
#28 Gymnastics Ringman
#29 Discobolus Statue
#30 Floyd Heard
#31 Sappho Fresco
#32 Nine Muses
#33 Barbara Majstorovic
#34 Trojan Horse
#35 Star Trek Stamp
#36 Bronze Talos
#37 Modern Talos
#38 Modern Atlas
#39 Apple without Byte
#40 Special Adam

PROLOGUE
I was born in Croatia in 1943 in what was at that time part of former Yugoslavia. My family and I were forced to leave our homes in 1944 in this war-torn country. For the next several months we had to flee for our lives as refugees. We were shot at by British planes, eventually captured, and thrown into a Russian run concentration camp with 30,000 other castaways. Barely surviving the diseases and malnutrition in that filthy compound, our captors decided to send my family to work for the next three years in the peat bogs of East Germany. With the help of an OSS agent, we were able to escape the cruelties of postwar Europe and finally found our way into West Germany. With aid from the Red Cross, it was there my great-aunt, who lived in Wisconsin, was able to locate our family in order to send us CARE packages. After vouching for our livelihood and sending us money for ship fare across the Atlantic, we arrived in Ellis Island in the winter of 1950.
Our first three years were spent in Saukville, Wisconsin. After my father found work at the Schlitz Brewing Company, we moved to Milwaukee and have lived here since 1953. Thanks to the efforts of my parents, we all became proud citizens of the United States in 1956. I attended Catholic grade schools, went on to West Division High School, continued my education at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with majors in Latin, German and, eventually, English. I taught all three of those subjects at John Marshall High from 1968 to 2000. I also coached boys and girls soccer, boys gymnastics, and boys and girls track during 30 of those years, although not simultaneously, at Marshall.
But that’s another story chronicalled in another book, which I have written, titled Passage: The Making of an American Family.
# # #
Retirement should unquestionably be considered a rite of passage. For me it was June 2000, after which my life would travel in unexpected directions. Being a typical German, I had defined myself by my career – teaching in a large city public high school. I was one of those fortunate people who didn’t hate getting up in the morning to go to work. Since I’ve retired, I began to question how I was going to fill the void with the same enjoyment and satisfaction. It is at this point where I want to tell the reader about my experiences in the teaching profession including the hope it encourages others to consider this noble profession.
It was an unusually hot June day in 1968 as I sat underneath a huge tent, which covered the entire university’s athletic field. Beads of sweat were trickling down my face as I eagerly anticipated walking across the make-shift stage under a canopy which served as our university graduation site. I don’t remember walking across that stage, only that I felt somewhat cheated in that unstructured venue.
However, as I look back at the graduation ceremony, it was fortuitously appropriate that I received my diploma on an athletic field. With a Latin book in one hand and a German text in the other, had anyone said to me I would be a head coach in three different sports for the next 30 years, I would have told them that they had been playing football without a helmet. You see, I never had the opportunity to participate in any sports in high school or, for that matter, in college. It certainly wasn’t due to lack of interest. It was simply a matter of money. If I was going to go to the university, I had to work and save money to help my parents provide me with a college education. That meant I had to work every weeknight after school from 4 to 6 pm as well as an eight-hour shift on Saturdays at a local produce store. In the early sixties, I was able to rest and do my homework because stores were closed on Sundays and only open until 6 o’clock on weekdays.
Yet, I was not spared from any rigorous physical exercises. The workouts were carrying 100 pound bags of potatoes from the sidewalk onto a pallet in the basement of the store. For any jumping exercises, I would leap away from the large wooden banana boxes which too frequently hid stowaways inside the shredded newspapers, which cushioned those tropical treats. The stowaways usually were unusually huge spiders or, just for other surprises, very ugly, scary-looking critters. Unloading watermelons, which we tossed from inside a semi truck, in relay fashion to the inside of the store, were our throwing exercises. The semis occasionally had snakes (harmless?) hidden inside the ‘straw beds. I’d run hurdles over the straw heaps anytime I saw anything slithering in the truck. The few times I actually sat on the bench was to shuck corn for those customers who preferred those ears a capella.
I also had to work, especially in my junior and senior years, to keep my ‘55 Chevy in shape for those frequent cruises down the avenues to the lakefront on most weekends. In those days gas was just 25 cents a gallon. One hour of work could get me three gallons. To save money, I changed the oil and washed this two-tone, eight cylinder vehicle frequently.
Of course, I did more than merely drive around in a Chevy with my girlfriend next to me. In addition to work after school, I had homework but needed to help around the house with the usual chores: mowing the lawn with a hand push mower or getting a real workout shoveling snow away from a three-car garage in our alley. Staying in shape was no problem in those days. And, no, I didn’t have to walk three miles through a foot of snow to get to school in those days. I had a car and it wasn’t far.
How did I come to choose the teaching profession? After attending my first three years of grade school in the small town of Saukville, my parents were able to move to Milwaukee into a house they bought near St. Michael’s Grade School. St. Michael’s parish, which was in a predominantly German neighborhood at the time, was populated with refugees who had come, like myself, from Yugoslavia. Because I knew the English language rather well by that time, I was given my first exposure to teaching. Sister Superior allowed me to go down to the cafeteria most early afternoons to tutor the new immigrants who were in the class. It was the first time I actually considered a career in teaching because I enjoyed it so much. Previous to those sessions, I had considered the priesthood because I loved Latin, which every altar boy had to learn; however, in time the vow of celibacy wasn’t compatible with raging hormones at the time.
I was too young to realize, then, one of the fringe benefits of knowing another language was that I could understand English better. I n