Retired Officers Serving at Schools : Education: School districts have found a new source of talented teachers by turning to those who have left the military.

Don Mathiowetz says “stand-down” when he refers to Hoover High School’s spring break. Tom Dorman and Moe Felix at La Jolla High still don coat and tie each day when most of their colleagues have long since abandoned formality for open-collared sports shirts or even T’s. Barton Deaderick tells himself to watch his tongue--his peppery military vocabulary is off-limits when he’s disciplining a kid at Johnson Elementary.

But these retired Navy and Marine Corps officers are quick to point out that language or clothes are poor measures of whether they can teach in the chaotic world of the public schools.

John Enockson goes off each day to teach at Foothills High in San Marcos by reminding himself that he’s no longer a “big fish,” like his last billet as a Marine Corps colonel attached to an U.S Navy admiral’s staff in Coronado.

Wesley Robb downplays his 30 years as an Air Force meteorologist in working with algebra and geometry students at East San Diego’s Crawford High, noting that “most of them are singularly unimpressed” even if and when they do find out their teacher was a military man.

As the U.S. military trims itself for peacetime, more former military are considering teaching as a second career. School districts throughout the nation are eyeing this talented pool of veterans, many with advanced degrees, a large number with math and science specialties sorely needed in secondary schools, and almost all with extensive command and leadership experience.

Almost to an individual, the new teachers fail to fit the stereotype that one might expect.

“People generally have the screwed-up idea that we’re all martinets,” Crawford math teacher Donald Knepper, 61, a retired Navy submarine captain, said. “There might be some outfits like that, but any officer who just gives orders and doesn’t lead is going to be a failure.”

Their potential has been called a “peace dividend of skilled personnel” as the armed services pare down to smaller post-Cold War numbers by retiring a large percentage of high-level officers.

“The (two) that I’ve had were excellent,” said Florence Johnson, principal at the School for Creative and Performing Arts in San Diego--a campus where with many students march to the tune of their own drummer.

“They taught math and they were fabulous; the kids loved them because they were open to ideas and had high expectations for themselves and the students,” Johnson said, noting that they left for family reasons.

“I admit that, yes, their success surprised me. I worried that they would be too rigid, too impatient.”

Russ Vowinkel, a Navy reserve captain for 24 years and an educator for 22, summed up the two-edged sword that most retired military face in learning the ropes of public school teaching.

“They come with an ethic of discipline and responsibility that serve a large number of students well,” said Vowinkel, now principal at Morse High in Paradise Hills, with the second-largest enrollment of any city school campus.

“But on the other hand, their strong sense of what discipline and responsibility should entail does not elicit the same responses from students as it does from recruits.”

That’s an understatement, according to most retired military.

“I get very discouraged with kids who don’t want to work and who defy any and all attempts to reach them--even through their parents, their counselors, the principal, whomever,” said Crawford’s Robb, a retired Air Force colonel.

Not that Robb doesn’t continue to try. He encourages students to stick their head in his door during lunchtime and regularly they do, to ask a math question or to inquire about a grade. Many think the San Diego native--usually attired in Crawford’s cardinal-red colors--has been a teacher all his life instead of three full-time years.

“The best reward is when I see a student achieve something they said over and over they couldn’t do. When that happens, I have no regrets.”

Robb prepared himself ahead of time for the abrupt change from military order to student chaos.

“I certainly didn’t expect them to stand at attention for me,” the affable 60-year-old said. “I just don’t find discipline a problem, even though I never scream and shout, because that’s just not my technique.

“I’ve seen teachers who do scream at students and it doesn’t work anyways.”

As La Jolla’s Dorman, a former Marine Corps captain, put it: “If I told my students that I was a Marine and they’d better listen to what I’m saying, there would be instant alienation.”

Robb and his Crawford colleague Knepper were among a half-dozen retired officers who gained their state teaching credentials through a one-time program at San Diego State University several years ago.

Using a federal grant, the university’s School of Education solicited soon-to-retire officers with math or science backgrounds and offered them a paid internship as part of an accelerated credential program.

“There’s was a lot of potential talent out there,” Prof. George Mehaffey, who oversaw the effort, said. “But we sent out 200 applications, 30 were returned, 15 were accepted, and 5 showed up.

“Partly it’s because of salary--many figured they could not go for up to a year (after retirement) without a steady income--and partly it’s because a lot decide they don’t want to spend time working with kids,” he said. The self-winnowing process was more extensive than first expected, he said.

Of those who did come, Mehaffey said, all did well, even though they needed to learn much about the difficult conditions facing many urban families today.

“I think we all learned that you just can’t jump from the military to the classroom without some preparation,” Mehaffey said. “My feeling is that as long as candidates have proper understanding of what teaching involves, the paid internship idea can work anywhere.”

Robb said that while many military officers are interested in improving public education, “I’m not at all sure they all appreciate the difficulty of making the transition.”

Enockson, 54, prepared for his new career while still on active duty, taking required courses at night at National University.

Reflecting sentiments of several who have made the transition, Enockson said “the educational system could make things a lot easier” by considering military experience in lieu of the time-consuming requirements of a health class, a computer class and a U.S. Constitution class.

But “as far as the kids go, you have to realize that you’re operating in their community, and that you’re not going to be successful unless you have a lot of flexibility and accept them as being people.” That means, among other things, learning not to stand in the back of a classroom and bark out orders, he said--a trait that at least one Southeast San Diego teacher had to unlearn.

Hoover’s Mathiowetz, now teaching science to ninth-graders, ended his career as a Navy submarine captain in the key position of an inspector general----all while studying for his teaching credential--and then found himself on the first day of class picking up paper wads off the floor.

“To say it was humbling is an understatement,” he said with a laugh.

“But truthfully, I realized what I was getting into. I’m determined to give it a try. I think that math and chemistry should be fun, not the (grind) that my three daughters faced when they went through science in high school,” he said.

Mathiowetz, 53, banters nonstop with his students during a typical hour, emphasizing hands-on experiments and exhibiting the patience of Job at times when a clique of four students prove almost impossible to arouse academically.

Yet most of the students lavished praise on Mathiowetz, who took over the particular class in January from another teacher who proved incapable of handling it.

“We’ve learned a lot more with Mr. M.,” said 14-year-old Hai Thai, pointing out that Mathiowetz even built his own noise baffles during spring break in the high-ceilinged room so that students could hear more easily.

“He’s cool,” chimed in 15-year-old Khann Vun. “He doesn’t like to yell and he does a lot more experiments with us.”

“I’ll admit that I’m doing a lot more work now than I did in my last years of the Navy,” Mathiowetz said. “I get here at 7 a.m., never leave before 4 p.m., take work home every night, preparing lesson plans, lining up experiments three or four days ahead of time.

“But when I have at least a third of the parents show up at open house, when I see a student making an effort and having the light go on upstairs--that erases some of the doubts” of his 5 a.m. wake-up time, he said.

The 5 a.m. doubts also strike English teacher and track coach Tom Dorman at La Jolla High from time to time. Dorman was a captain in the Marine Corps when he left the service, but he’s only 31.

“I always wanted to teach but I couldn’t imagine doing it right out of college, at 22,” Dorman said. “So I went into the Marine Corps out of college as an adventurous start to life.

“I do sometimes wonder about what I’m doing--there’s so many problems in society that make it appear we have problems at school--but teachers do some pretty amazing things--and that comes from someone who before getting into this line thought that there were a lot of lazy, whiny people in education who did nothing but complain.”

Dorman credits his Marine Corps training for smoothing the transition. Although only in his second year, he’s proven popular with his students, many of whom eat lunch with him and rap about both academics and athletics.

“In leadership, in management, in dealing with people, I was light years ahead of my (education school) classmates who were student teaching,” he said. “And I know more teachers who are stern disciplinarians than I knew (similar) officers in the military.

“I don’t ask students to do what I won’t do. So I write when I ask them to write, and my name is right there on the chart that tracks the number of books students are reading. If I take the risk as well, how can any of my students then complain?”

Not all the new teachers work out, however.

The district this spring dismissed one probationary teacher because he simply proved unable to shed his military demeanor in the classroom.

Gail Boyle, who monitors new teachers for San Diego city schools, said that the teacher simply “had no sense of how to talk to kids, that he felt his personal authority was all that he needed to make them jump----and they didn’t jump.”