Mr. Steve Ollanik on the California Zephyr Amtrak

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week in the USA and I’d like to take the opportunity to honor another extraordinary teacher. I met Mr. Steve Ollanik on a train journey from Chicago to Emeryville, California earlier this year. In the dining car one morning, I struck up a conversation with a warm, friendly man wearing an unusual “I <3 Physics” T-shirt which amused me. I soon discovered this jovial man had abandoned life as a successful Silicon Valley computer software engineer working on cutting edge artificial intelligence 22 years ago to become a third grade teacher. To this day he has never looked back.

When his wife succumbed to melanoma, Mr. Ollanik re-evaluated his life priorities. He remembered how much he enjoyed being with children. In his pre-engineering days he had led children’s groups at the Jewish Community Center and had been a camp counselor in college. Upon reflecting on what was really important to him, he decided to cut back on his responsibilities as an engineer and started volunteering in a local school as a teacher’s aide. He says the day he set foot in the classroom again he knew he wanted to be a teacher.

He moved to Boulder, Colorado to be closer to his family of origin, attended the University of Colorado to prepare to become a teacher, and then started teaching third graders. While most of his peers commend him for his courage to walk away from a lucrative career in engineering to follow his heart, he notices the lack of respect in society for teachers. It comes out as assumptions about his level of intelligence, until he reveals he has a graduate degree in computer science and engineering from MIT.  He points out, as we are all well aware, teachers are severely underpaid and unsupported by taxpayers. Yet, Mr. Ollanik doesn’t lament this for what he gains in fulfillment and joy is priceless to him.

In this interview you will hear the dedication in his voice to his students, his sense of satisfaction when he sees the light go on in his students’ eyes, knowing he is making a meaningful positive impact in the lives of young people. How much he really cares about his students is obvious in this conversation. Some of his students call him “Dad”, or even “Mom”, which is rather hilarious as he’s a fully bearded fellow. That speaks either to his capacity to nurture his students, or says something about abnormal hair growth in adult females in his locality. He reports he has had a good solid laugh every day of the past 22 years he has been teaching because kids are simply delightful.

Teachers all over the country, including California, Colorado, Arizona, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, are striking, and winning. Not only for better pay and improved infrastructure, but also to change policies that favor performance-based pay and charter schools. Teachers also support sanctuary protections for undocumented children. (People with personal relationships with each other generally want to protect each other.) Activists in North Carolina included expansion of Medicaid and mental health services in their demands, because students need to be healthy in order to learn. They are taking an approach that is holistic, or even “beyond holistic“. Teachers want and deserve more support from society to do the work we have entrusted them to do on our behalf, that is to educate our children. It isn’t just about salary anymore, it is about the future of public education, and the country.

Cartoon courtesy of Gustavo Rodriguez, www.garrinchatoonz.com

#TeacherAppreciationWeek