Your Teacher Wears Army Boots

If Joe Berlin’s students could see him now, locked and loaded and looking like a camouflaged warrior out of “Apocalypse Now,” they never again would give him flak about doing their homework.

As a reservist with the California National Guard, the 52-year-old fifth-grade teacher at Juanamaria Elementary School in east Ventura spends his days patrolling Santa Barbara Airport with an M-16 slung over one shoulder, police radios jangling from both hips and a black beret propped at a menacing angle atop his bald head.

He has been out of the classroom since before Thanksgiving, called up as part of a massive deployment of National Guard troops in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He is proud to do his duty, sacrificing $750 a month--the difference between his teacher’s pay and Guard pay--to keep an eye out for unruly passengers and wayward luggage.

But right about now, he is starting to miss his old job.

“I miss my kids, I really want to see them,” said Berlin, who has been told that his mission is winding down but is uncertain when it will end. “The day they relieve me is the day I’ll be back in the classroom.”

At a time when employers have had to juggle work schedules to accommodate military reservists called to active duty, Berlin is believed to be the only public school teacher in Ventura County on extended National Guard leave.

School district officials in the county said they know of no other case where a teacher has been on leave since the terrorist attacks, although Fillmore High School has a part-time drafting teacher who serves on his own time with the Guard at Oxnard Airport.

That makes Berlin, the divorced father of two college-age children, both a patriot and a pioneer.

Confronted for the first time with such extraordinary circumstances, Ventura Unified School District administrators took up the prickly issue of whether to extend his salary and benefits beyond the 30 days required by state law for public employees.

Ventura County government and a few local cities have made such concessions for reservists on their payrolls. The school district decided only to pick up the requisite 30 days’ pay, but did extend Berlin’s health benefits for the time he is away.

“I’ve had to make some adjustments,” said Berlin, a Michigan native who has been teaching for 22 years, the last four at schools in Lancaster and Ventura. “But I’m not complaining. I knew the obligation and I knew the rules when I signed up.”

Harder yet has been the time away from Juanamaria Elementary. The school year was only a few weeks old when the terrorist attacks took place. And by the time he was called up in November, he and his students were just starting to click.

He has only visited once since then, asked by his principal to stay away because his presence caused a disruption.

School district Supt. Trudy Arriaga said it is not that Berlin’s students didn’t want to see him, but after he showed up the substitute teacher had a hard time regaining control of the classroom.

“I’ve had the opportunity to e-mail him and thank him for his service,” Arriaga said. “I appreciate what he’s doing. I think he’s a real model for our community, giving of himself to serve our country.”

The work is not glamorous.

Berlin has been a guardsman for 17 years and had earlier been an Army medic for two years.

Now a sergeant and team leader with the 49th Combat Support Command, Berlin oversees a crew keeping watch at Santa Barbara Airport. They come from all walks of life and are among nearly 5,000 California guardsmen on duty performing homeland defense.

Most of Berlin’s eight-hour shifts have been uneventful. He faced a bomb scare caused by a passenger who left a piece of luggage unattended. He was in on a drug bust and has helped calm unruly passengers simply by taking a step toward them. He even helped push a Cessna with a flat tire off a runway.

“It’s something, in the grand scheme of things, that is kind of minor,” he said of his airport service. “But it’s a way that I was able to contribute. People come up to me all the time and say, ‘Thank you, I’m glad you’re here.’ I always say I’m proud to do it.”

It’s unlikely that he will do it much longer.

The National Guard is wrapping up its tour of duty at regional airports across the country, with soldiers scheduled to be relieved May 10 by local law enforcement officers who in turn will be replaced later this year by federal officers.

It will take at least another week after that for the guardsmen--more than 800 are stationed at 30 commercial airports throughout the state--to be deactivated and resume their regular lives.

“Each of the Guard members who has been activated has sacrificed in some way, with some leaving family and friends, some leaving their jobs and some leaving the country,” said California National Guard spokeswoman Denise Varner. “What strikes me is that in every case they are so proud to serve their country, that sacrifice becomes secondary.”

At Santa Barbara Airport, patrol officer Jarrett Garcia said he will be sad to see the soldiers go. But he will especially miss Berlin.

“He’s a good man,” said Garcia, overseeing the same security area last week where Berlin was watching passengers moving through metal detectors. “In today’s world, I think you need to have teachers like Sgt. Berlin. I have two kids in grammar school and I’d love to have him as their teacher.”

If he is lucky, Berlin could make it back to the classroom about a month before the school year ends. It doesn’t leave him much time to reconnect with his students.

But he plans to salvage what he can, using his time away as a teaching tool.

“I teach American history in the fifth grade,” he said. “And I feel like this is history in the making.”