A Career of Substance and Meaning

By the early 1990s, he and his wife Marita were ready for warmer climes. Marita’s parents had retired and settled in North Carolina, and the young couple had experienced quite enough of the frigid temperatures and heavy snow that blanketed Cushing Academy in rural Ashburnham, MA, where he taught English and she worked in the admission office.

 

“It was fun,” he said, “and tiring.”

 

He sent out applications, sat for interviews, and ended up on North Mooreland Road in 1994.

 

Follansbee’s distinguished 41-year career in education, the last 29 in Collegiate’s Upper School, comes to an end with his retirement in June. The idea of reaching the nice round number of 30 was intriguing, he said, but he’s ready, and he’s made the decision with no second thoughts and no regrets.

 

He’s done what he can do, he feels. He’s taught American literature each year and created a variety of well-subscribed electives. He’s served as a department chair, lead advisor, literary magazine sponsor, and coach of both boys and girls Cub soccer. In 2012, he earned the Brent Award, an honor presented annually to a career educator “who exemplifies the teacher, coach, mentor, counselor, friend model that is so vital to independent schools.”

 

In retirement, Follansbee will hardly sit still. There’s plenty he’ll do when he doesn’t have lessons to plan, papers to grade, and deadlines to meet. Now, the Hamilton College (B.A. in English) and University of Iowa (MFA) graduate will have much more time and psychic energy to pursue his aesthetic and creative passions when he doesn’t have to fit them in around his day job.

 

“I’ll try to publish more poems,” he said. “I have tons of them, but I haven’t had time to send them out because of teaching. I’ll continue writing. I love photography. I’m on Instagram and Facebook posting photographs and my story.  It’s fun. It’s a good hobby.”

 

An inveterate sports fan, he’ll also maintain his deep allegiance to the Boston area’s professional teams (Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins) as well as to the Iowa Hawkeyes and University of Virginia and VCU basketball, all programs he’s come to admire since he moved from New England.

 

And he’ll continue to play his most important roles: husband, father of Adriaan ’04 and Emma ’07, and doting grandfather of four young girls. When he says he plans to spend more time with his family, he means it with all his heart.

 

One day recently, Follansbee sat in the Jamie Neal Courtyard outside Pitt Hall and shared thoughts, insights, and reflections about his tenure in education.

 

You have to like your subject matter. I love literature. I love American literature, which I’ve taught at both schools every year. That curriculum goes from the past to the present and really helps characterize what America is and who Americans are. It goes from Puritan New England and The Scarlet Letter right up to the present day and our political turmoil and how we’re defining America in society now.

I’ve taught an elective called Science, Nature, Spirit, Soul. One of the pieces of literature that I was really drawn to when I was younger was Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I grew up in that area. My parents had a house in Fitzwilliam, NH, which was in the middle of nothing, which was wonderful, so I always appreciated and found sacred the natural world which influenced me to create the course.

 

And the course Literature of the Apocalypse. I’m thinking about current day. There’re disturbing patterns in our society and in technology, etc. that worry me as an older person. It makes me worry actually more for my grandchildren. And I teach Poetry Workshop, which I’ve always loved.

 

Poetry is an art. There’s art that we think of, which is dancing, visual arts, painting and sculpture. I think most people intensely involved in sports — and I was an athlete through high school (soccer, ice hockey, lacrosse, winter track) and college (soccer) — just know when you’re that focused and intent on something, special things happen. I like to think of those moments as being sacred and times of being truly alive. I feel that way in the natural world, and I feel that way when I write.

 

It’s mostly free verse, more of an open line, sometimes shorter lines that build pace. I also went through a phase of writing surrealistic poetry, which I really enjoyed, particularly when I was in my 30s. Writing now is more about the daily. I start writing about typical daily things and see what happens.

 

One poem that I’m remembering was about spending a night in a hotel by myself. My daughter (Emma) was interviewing for a job in DC, and we had to stay in separate places because the school where she was interviewing provided her a room, and I stayed somewhere else. I ended up writing a poem (entitled “When I Stayed by Myself”) that emerged from being there, and it ended up alluding to Henry David Thoreau.

 

Another poem that I’m writing about has to do with nature. It’s going to be published in a journal. It’s called “A Heron Returns from Winter.” It’s about a heron coming back to a familiar place and finding the Hardywood Brewery being there.

 

Sometimes that happens. Otherwise, it’s being more disciplined. When I’m writing, since I’ve been teaching, I usually set aside time during the summer. I get up and read the poets that I like, and that puts me in that kind of world or vein of using language. Usually something triggers, and I start to write and see what happens and see how it shapes. I do that for a couple of hours in the morning, 5-to-7, when it’s quiet and nobody’s awake, and usually in a couple of hours, I’ll have a poem.

I think, really, it’s a bit of both. My vocation and devotion to students writing well is there. That obviously has been really important, and my heart is in that, though in the hubbub of life, we don’t necessarily hear that heart palpitating all the time because we have so much work to do. When you know you’re serving kids well, it feels really good. It is kind of an art in some ways, and I really feel very much at home when I know I’m doing art well.

 

Oh, boy.  I want to be remembered as someone who challenged kids, who took them in according to where they were in their reading and writing and paid attention to each of them to make them better at those skills. It’s very hard to always succeed at that. I’ve always wanted to make sure I’m challenging kids and pushing them to grow but being fair at the same time.

~Weldon Bradshaw