Poem To A Retiring Teacher

Exit Laughing: Roast a fitting farewell for retiring Quincy High coaching ...

When they finished roasting Bob Sylvia, there wasn’t much left to cover.

Friends, family, colleagues and former players gathered to honor the longtime Quincy High School coach and teacher as he headed into retirement.

Honor? Well, yes, but nothing was out of bounds, no secret sacred. He was fair game, from head to toe.

His personal dress code, his habit of arriving early at school, his new domestic chores as a retired husband – they all came under the microscope and blared out over the microphone.

“All the years I’ve known ‘Syl,’ he never bought a pair of shoes,” Gene Macomber, a retired physical education teacher, assistant football coach and high school dean, told those assembled in the Quincy Elks’ Tirrell Room recently. “He never wore a jacket or a suit. His idea of being well dressed is wearing a baseball cap, sweatsuit and a pair of sneakers.”

Then there was the time he showed up in the locker room, talking to a couple of his hockey players, who were trying to muffle their laughter. It turned out the coach had turned up wearing a mismatched pair of sneakers.

You had to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Quincy High principal Frank Santoro.

“I’d arrive at school at 6 a.m. and Syl would already be there,” Santoro said. “It wasn’t because he wanted to get an early start to the day. He gets rid of his garbage from wherever he lives.”

Macomber again: “Bob’s responsibilities at home: He will wash the floors, he will clean the windows, he will clean the shower and the tub, he will take his plate to the sink and he will take the dishes out (of the dish washer). I predict after two months of that, one of two things will happen: He’ll sell the house or go back to work.”

For Sylvia, 67, his last day at work – teaching phys ed – was Friday. He’d already stepped down as varsity hockey coach after the 2009-10 season.

“It’s been great,” he said of his career. “To be able to last 45 years teaching and 44 coaching, I feel very lucky.”

Known most widely for his 44 years as Quincy High hockey coach, Sylvia also coached soccer, girls tennis, baseball and golf.

“I met a lot of kids and eventually got into coaching sons of men I coached as boys,” said Sylvia, a Roslindale native who has lived in Marshfield for 10 years.

Wild Rose Reader: A Poem for a Retiring Music Teacher

. Grace has been on my case a lot lately. She keeps telling me that I’ve got to start sending my poetry manuscripts out soon—before I become a grandmother and a part-time daycare provider for my first grandchild. Grace is persistent. She even sent one of my poetry collections to an editor herself a while ago! (More on that story in the future.) I worked as an elementary school teacher for more than three decades and as a school librarian for three years. I also taught a children's literature course at Boston University from 2002-2008. I am now retired and write poetry for children. I currently serve as a member of the NCTE Poetry Committee and as the events coordinator for the Massachusetts PAS North Shore Council of IRA.

Life's sunbeams and shadows; poems and prose, with appendix including biographical and historical notes in prose

Didascalus; or, The teacher [a poem].

Poems

Journal of education

Instructor