I cleared out my office this week, a few days after a retirement reception at which I enjoyed reconnecting with colleagues, former students, and friends of education. I have always felt appreciated in Bartlesville, and I am grateful to call it my adopted home.

I still have a few weeks of official employment left, which beyond answering emails will include some time in the Technology Services department and the high school outfitting Chromebook carts, but, for the first time in 37 years, I no longer have an assigned classroom or office.

Clearing out of the Education Service Center had both similarities to and differences from clearing out of Bartlesville High School in 2017 after teaching physics there for 28 years. Back then, I was leaving behind a laboratory we had opened in 2003 and for which I was involved in every detail of its design, construction, and furnishing.

The lab I left behind had every cabinet stuffed with physics equipment accumulated over decades, and I was lucky to have two different Teachers of the Year (TOYs) inherit the program and carry it forward, and the current TOY is planning for her own eventual retirement by preparing one of my former students to carry on the long tradition of phun physics at BHS.

Nine years later, I have left behind an office built a quarter century before I came to town, filled with cabinets and furnishings I had no role in selecting, save for an air purifier I added during the pandemic plus my purchase of a used Aeron chair to replace the hideous desk chair I found upon my arrival. Over the past few weeks, the Aeron had been shedding bits of plastic, as if it sensed that the end was near.

The file cabinets barely visible at the far left are now mostly filled with vintage physical media I collected from across the building and digitized for an online archive. The wooden cabinets below the counter on the opposite site once held boxes of cables, tools, and equipment which have migrated down the hall to Technology Services, as the office’s new occupant will have different administrative roles.

Back in 2017, I left behind my entire physics curriculum for later instructors to use or discard as they saw fit. This time I am leaving behind many spreadsheets and instruction documents, along with a log of my daily actions since June 2024. I linked all of those documents to Google’s artificial intelligence via Notebook LM to create a GrangerBot, which might ease the transition as my former administrative roles are dispersed among a handful of central office folk.

Actuarial analysis says that I have about a 50% chance of living to age 88. Were I to last that long, I would have spent a quarter of my life before becoming an independent adult, one-third of it teaching, one-tenth of it as an administrator, and the final third of my lifespan in retirement.

All I am guaranteed, of course, are the years I have already enjoyed. I charted my six different jobs over the past decades on top of annual portraits to provide me with some perspective on their relative durations.

I have worked in education-related jobs for over 40 years, and the conclusion of my 37 years with Bartlesville Public Schools prompted a profile in Bartlesville Monthly Magazine, which prodded me to look back at my work life here.

Coming to Town

I came to Bartlesville at age 23, lured here by one of the very few full-time high school physics teaching positions in the state. I had turned down other science teaching opportunities in Sapulpa, Ponca City, and Moore, holding out for one in physics, and fortune smiled on me.

The only reason little Bartlesville had five sections of physics was because it was then the headquarters for Phillips Petroleum, a Fortune 500 company. Moving from the OKC metro where I had always lived to a town over 20 times smaller in population, and 35 times smaller in area, was an adjustment.

I didn’t know anyone in town, although a few of my father’s cousins lived in the area. I remember going to the movies here with someone back in 1989, and curious students peppering me with questions about us the next school day. After that, I often drove to Tulsa to regain some big-city anonymity in my entertainments.

In 2002, Conoco and Phillips merged and the corporate headquarters shifted to the Houston area. The consequent demographic changes meant that teaching physics full-time in Bartlesville was not possible after 2005. An ongoing departmental chairmanship sufficed to fill out my work schedule until 2016, when it became apparent that it was finally time for me to leave the classroom.

Leaving the Classroom

As I was ending my 27th year of teaching physics, Chuck McCauley, who had risen through the administrative ranks from a vice-principalship at the high school in 2001 to the district superintendency in 2016, asked me to join his leadership team. He wanted me to spearhead a 1:1 Chromebooks initiative in grades 6-12 and take the lead on district technology and communications.

I had earned a master’s degree in Educational Leadership back in 1999, but I had never applied for an administrative position, feeling I was far better suited for teaching and leading the science department than being a school site administrator. I had instead channeled my administrative skills into the science department, various bond issue projects, leading a $1.7 million Phillips 66 grant to develop STEM courses and facilities across grades 6-12, and serving on about four dozen committees over the years, along with leading the certified staff contract bargaining team. I’d also used my technology and communications know-how to create the high school website since 2004 and the district website since 2012.

When Chuck posed his question, acknowledging that in the past I had always demurred from pursuing administrative positions, I instinctively knew that it was time to leave. In the 1990s, the school offered 5-7 sections of physics, but with demographic changes it seemed inevitable that eventually I would be burdened with a third laboratory science preparation, on top of Inquiry and AP Physics. Also, Wendy and I had married in 2016, and an administrative salary would improve our long-term financial security.

Administrative Challenges

I spent a transition year teaching three physics classes in the morning, with the afternoons spent leading district communications and developing a multi-year technology expansion plan. When I left the high school for the Education Service Center, my immediate focus was on Chromebooks and the Canvas Learning Management System, but soon a state education financial crisis developed.

I played my part in addressing that in 2018, by which time I was in my early 50s and qualified for full teacher retirement after 29 years of service. However, a salary cap on my earnings from 1989 to 1995 would have impacted my pension, and it took another four years of service to “wear away” that cap.

In 2020, Covid-19 struck, and I chaired the district’s response for several years, which included expanding to 1:1 Chromebooks across all grade levels. I remember us preparing 87 carts with 2,175 Chromebooks that fall.

By 2023, the pandemic had eased, and I could have retired with my full pension. However, I was still over two years from being able to tap into my personal retirement savings accounts without an early withdrawal penalty, five years from being able to claim Social Security, and eight years from qualifying for Medicare. So I stayed on.

Taking My Leave

A year later, Chuck confirmed to me that he would be retiring as superintendent in June 2026. Being four years younger than I am, he planned to continue working after that, just not in public education. I immediately responded that I too would retire in June 2026, but I’d be retiring from work, period. I knew that would be the time to leave, as I had accomplished my missions, and a new superintendent could repurpose my administrative position. One of my last projects was creating an immense digital archive of old media that had survived the ravages of time at the central office.

Here’s a visual summary of my career at BPSD:

Now I’m past the 59.5 years of age required to withdraw from retirement savings without penalties. I invested 20% of my career gross salary into those savings, so with my pension I can safely retire. Wendy is nine years younger than I am, with a less generous pension, so she won’t qualify for even reduced early retirement for some years, and she plans to keep leading the Chromebook repair class at the high school.

Forty years ago I answered a calling I keenly felt to serve in my home state’s public schools. Three years later, I arrived in Bartlesville. Now that call has been fully answered; I am content.