No more papers to grade. No more report cards to write. No more
lesson plans, school bells, staff meetings. Ever. Stephen and
Caroline Caracciolo – known to everyone as Mr. C and Mrs. C – are
packing up their classrooms at Nordstrom Elementary and Britton
Middle School for the final time.
No more papers to grade. No more report cards to write. No more lesson plans, school bells, staff meetings.
Ever.
Stephen and Caroline Caracciolo – known to everyone as Mr. C and Mrs. C – are packing up their classrooms at Nordstrom Elementary and Britton Middle School for the final time. Happiness, now, is in retirement. And after a combined 59 years of teaching, the Caracciolos are due for some relaxation.
“I don’t know what it’s like to get up when you want to get up,” Mrs. C said laughing. Her guffaw is contagious and easily recognizable in the halls of Britton where she has taught 7th and 8th grade English since the 1980s.
Mr. C spent his 21 years in elementary schools in Morgan Hill, most recently as a fourth-grade teacher at Nordstrom Elementary.
Judging by the steady stream of tears from eighth-grade students hugging Mrs. C good-bye and the dozens of “I love you Mr. C” scrawled in his final yearbook, the children don’t want to see them go.
“We will miss the kids, they kept us young,” Mr. C said.
“They’re like my own children. And they’ve given me every single gray hair on my head,” Mrs. C said. Married 30 years on July 5 – the day after Independence Day – and without children of their own, some of the Caracciolo’s fondest memories were spent in the classroom.
ROYALTY SAYS GOODBYE
Ask anyone at Britton and they will tell you the truth: Mrs. C is the queen.
Her eighth-graders will attest to that with a brace-filled smile and vigorous nod. “Oh yeah, she always says ‘Obey the queen,'” Rebecca Rottenborn, 13, said.
“When you reach my age, you should be a queen,” said Mrs. C who turned 60 this year.
She began her reign in Morgan Hill Unified School District in 1972, after earning her bachelor’s degree in English and credential at Chico State University. Her first class was at Gwinn School as Caroline Perrotti teaching English, choir and guitar. In 1975, she moved to Britton Middle and took on the AVID class that encourages students to go to college, which she was a part of until her last days at MHUSD. A few years later, she and Stephen met at a wine-tasting party and married in 1980. Miss P. became Mrs. C and after five years of marriage, the couple moved to Misawa in Northern Japan through a program that sends teachers overseas. Mr. C, who has a bachelor’s degree in geography from San Jose State University was working as a mechanical designer in the Silicon Valley. He quit his job, sold their furniture and cars, and left. It was in Japan, as substitute teacher that Mr. C got turned on to teaching.
“This is all right,” Mr. C said. They returned in 1987 and Mr. C got his credential in a year through National University, was hired after a panel interview at MHUSD and started his second career. He gives his wife credit for showing him the ropes.
“She’s been my crutch. She has helped me immensely,” he said.
In Mrs. C’s class last Wednesday, the eighth-graders worked on a final about the novel “Hunger Games.” They paired off and described the most important parts in pictures and in words, though the end of school and Mrs. C’s final day led to a few distractions during the class period.
“She’s one of my favorites. She was really nice and explains everything really well. We always laugh in this class,” Valeria Rojas, 14, said.
Mrs. C is Christine Watson’s “favorite teacher ever,” because she’s open and makes students feel comfortable so making mistakes is not traumatic, but rather used as a teaching moment or many times turned into a time to laugh.
“I want English to be fun for them and I want them to learn and not hate it, so to speak,” Mrs. C said.
“She’s always been so caring and closer to her students than most teachers. Mrs. C is hard to compare with other teachers after having someone this great,” Watson, 13, said. She was Mrs. C’s teaching assistant and in both her and 7th and 8th grade English classes.
“The school will definitely miss her,” Britton Principal Carol Coursey said. “We’re going to miss each other.”
The promotion ceremony June 3 is really when retirement hit Mrs. C. The retiring teachers were asked to stand and be recognized to which the audience of children yelled “We love you Mrs. C!” and “We will miss you Mrs. C!”
That’s when the sentimental feelings set in and the realization that after going to school for forever, she said, she won’t be in front of a classroom again.
“I’m never bored. Except when I give them a test and I have to wait for them to finish. They say it takes a special person to teach junior high and now I finally realize what that means. Most teachers don’t like all the socializing, everything is changing for them in middle school. Sure they look cute with their little lunch pails in kindergarten but there’s something about this age group. I love this age,” she said.
More than an hour had passed after the last day of the school year Friday. Still, every few minutes clumps of students, most of them eighth-graders and most of them crying, would scoot into Room 25 to hug Mrs. C good-bye.
“How many hugs here?” Mrs. C said. “Don’t cry. It’s going to be all right,” she consoled. As she knows too well, 13-year-olds bend slightly toward the dramatic side of things. They left calling out, “We love you Mrs. C” or “You’re the best teacher ever Mrs. C.”
THE ROCKET MAN
Last year, Mr. C taught sixth-grade – a perfect set-up for Alexis Garcia’s brother who was a fifth-grader at the time. He could not wait to be in Mr. C’s class. Alexis said for months that’s all he talked about. The volcanos, the rockets, the dissections, the hovercraft and the rumors about how fun his class was. In just a few months, Mr. C would be his sixth-grade teacher.
In a cruel lesson that things don’t always go your way – but they sometimes can for your little sister – Mr. C was relocated to teaching fourth-grade this year. Alexis’ brother was heartbroken.
“He’s so jealous of me,” a mischievous smiles grew on Alexis’ face. “He told me, ‘you’re so lucky.’ I know I am,” Alexis said.
The experience of Mr. C’s class is as hands-on as classes come. Students lucky enough to call Mr. C their teacher – known for dressing up like Christopher Columbus and a Trekkie at various times throughout the year – were taught the base curriculum with a gigantic serving of science.
His first classroom was at the old Machado Elementary School in 1989. He moved to Burnett to teach almost every grade except third and in 2006, Mr. C made his final move to Nordstrom Elementary.
Three days before school let out for summer and Mr. C waved good-bye to his students for the last time, the class dissected frogs. It’s a challenge not too many fourth-grade classes nor fourth-grade teachers take on.
“Are you allowed to cut the head off?” shouted one student, her latex gloves slimy with the “frog juice” or residual formaldehyde.
“Mr. C does dangerous things,” Arinze Okafor, 10, said. “I found the intestines!” The students along with three volunteer parents and grandparents were fingers deep in frog stomachs, exploring the internal organs and muscular structure. Their wide-eyes and squeamish faces were priceless.
George Peregoy, better known by Mr. C’s class as “Papa George,” is Avery Rivera’s grandpa and a volunteer at Nordstrom. He and two others assisted Mr. C in the frog dissection.
“He’s a real treasure. He’s got a strong bias toward science. He’s just magnificent,” Peregoy said. “He incorporates science into the entire curriculum.”
In a stroll past the teacher’s lounge, one of Mr. C’s most discerning students Ethan Sandberg – like “iceberg with sand instead of ice” – overheard the words “retire” and “Mr. C” from a yard duty aide leaving the lounge. He kept the secret hidden from his classmates, but not for very long.
“I’m the one who knew first. I even saw the teacher’s lounge when I heard it,” Sandberg said.
How Mr. C teaches – much like Mrs. C – is done with humor and creativity.
“He’s one of those people who doesn’t lose their patience a lot,” Robert Bengel, 10, said. “He’s got a couple of good sayings. ‘There’s a sucker born every second.’ ‘Son of a gun.’ ‘Corn-fused.’ ‘Bonehead.’ They’re all really funny,” he said.
“You know they talk about smart boards these days,” Mr. C said referring to the overhead projector screens that can stream video or the Internet in class. “You can’t touch it and hold it. I bring in things, ‘here, this is rock from the land of Crazy Horse. This is a piece of the Roman Coliseum,” he said.
Once the word was out that they were the final class Mr. C will ever teach – their mission was to be “the best class he’s ever had,” Sandberg said.
The children lined up in the back of class after cleaning up their frog parts to sign Mr. C’s yearbook. What they wrote brought him to tears.
“Some wrote ‘I was so sad when I heard you were retiring’ or ‘I’ve loved you ever since the first day.’ This year, I got so much of it. It was overwhelming,” Mr. C said.
“Mine is the last report card he will ever make after 21 years,” Quinn Neto, 10, said, twirling a single frog leg around between two fingers. “He’s really nice and exciting and funny.”
Since this was Mr. C’s last year teaching and coincidentally wasn’t going to be evaluated – he wanted to go all out and “cram science down their little throats,” he said. With English there was science, with math there was science, with history – science. Oh and how the children loved it.
“He’s fun. He’s fun. He’s fun. He’s fun times infinity,” Sandberg said.
“The best teacher in the history of histories,” Kieran Hutcheson, 9, added.
ADVENTURES LIE AHEAD
“If you’re going to go. I’m definitely going to go,” Mr. C recalled after his wife told him she was thinking about retiring this year.
It wasn’t until March, when retirement became a serious discussion. “You want to go out at the top,” Mrs. C said. “I didn’t want to do another year and not do as well.”
Now, with their calendars wide open, the Caracciolos will try to make themselves as busy and distracted as possible when August rolls around.
“It hasn’t hit me yet,” Mr. C said. “Because we always get the summers off … not until the first day of school I think. When it’s ‘yes, we really are not going back.'”
Mr. C’s 2007 Chevy Corvette convertible will add to the distraction.
“It’s my first ‘Vette and probably my last,” Mr. C said and it’s a beauty – atomic orange and lightening fast. *”It had 23 miles on it the day I bought it,” he said. A small detail, Mrs. C laughed about not knowing. In fact, she even had the year wrong of the “January 28, 2007” purchase.
“Can you imagine? How much fun?” Mrs. C said as she hopped into the passenger seat for a drive. “So much better than cleaning house or doing laundry.”
Their dog – and only child – Keesha a white, puffy Samoya will continue to go with the couple wherever they go. Since it was a puppy, Keesha, 12, traveled with Mr. C from their home in South San Jose to school with him in their 32-foot motor home.
While Mr. C taught, Keesha played in the motor home and sat perched in the front seat waiting for a visit at lunch or afterschool.
“This isn’t normal Stephen,” Mrs. C said to her husband as he explained Keesha’s separation anxiety.
The running joke at a teacher appreciation celebration was that Nordstrom would have three free parking spots next year.
Amid weekend trips to wine taste in Napa Valley or to Carmel or Monterey, the Caracciolos will start their retirement with some much-needed rest and relaxation.
“It’s been a fun career. I’m going to sleep and do absolutely nothing,” Mrs. C said about her immediate plans. “I’ve never known that feeling, to wake up and having nothing to do.”
After sleeping for a few months, the couple will start a long drive with Keesha and the motor home to the Iowa State Fair.
“I want to eat fried Twinkies. I have goals of going to opening day at every baseball stadium. Visit coffee shops. See all the things we couldn’t see during the school year. The Indy 500, the Kentucky Derby, Mardi Gras,” he said.
The Caracciolos won’t soon be forgotten as they begin exploring after 59 hard years of work. Papa George, the volunteer from Mr. C’s class, is petitioning to get an asteroid named after Stephen.
“There are thousands of asteroids that aren’t named,” Papa George said.
Perhaps, they will find two asteroids to name – Mr. and Mrs. C.
