The Irrepressible Educator

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor
When I heard in July that Glen Lake Community Schools’ bus driver Chad Kahler had been hired as the new middle school science teacher, my first thought was, “Brilliant!“ My second thought was, “From bus driver to middle school teacher? That seems like leaping from the frying pan into the fire.”
I had already suspected that Chad was unusual, even among Leelanau County’s well-known cadre of casual individualists and eccentrics. On a school field trip to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore’s Port Oneida District several years ago, I boarded Chad’s bus to discover an amazing classroom on wheels. He had transformed the segmented walls above the vehicle’s windows into a diverting, entertaining, and yes, educational calendar of facts and figures, such as, “On this day in 1944…” or, “Water consists of two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen.”

I thought, “This is not a normal bus driver.” My impression was confirmed later that day when students touring a historic farm’s silo were met at the barn door by our docent and interpreter: Mr. Kahler.
On a sunny day at the end of August, Chad took a break from his preparations for the upcoming school year to share some of the experiences that have informed his lifelong journey as an educator.
“I graduated from Michigan State University with a teaching degree in environmental education and earth sciences in 1982,” he says, adding somewhat ruefully, “In the ‘70s, the environment was supposed to be the coming trend. Now, that part of my degree is considered mostly useless,” from the state’s teaching certification viewpoint – although he continues to find value in the ecological approach to both teaching and learning.
Chad describes his first experiences as a student teacher in Battle Creek as a trial by fire. “In the mornings, I had a seventh grade class whose teacher introduced himself on the first day, told me he’d be in the lounge, and I never saw him after that. Then I had eighth graders in the afternoons with a nurturing mentor of a teacher. She allowed me to take three or four days to go to the school’s outdoor center, where I could teach in a hands-on way.”
“Every day was a trying time,” he continues, “but I learned that I wanted to do more teaching.” After a stint in Algonac, where he taught seventh grade earth science as well as drama, both he and Kari, his college sweetheart, were pink-slipped, and decided to try their luck up north.
Kari found work at Northwestern Michigan College, running the residential East Hall, while Chad became a regular on the substitute-teacher circuit, commuting to districts as diverse as Suttons Bay, Kingsley, Kalkaska, Glen Lake, Buckley and Traverse City.
“I learned a lot in substitute teaching,” he exclaims with a laugh. “I really honed my skills, especially at Forest Area, where I subbed a lot. The philosophy at that time was ‘open schools,’” and the district applied the idea literally, with both the library and the principal in the center of a huge room with no walls, and only a few pieces of freestanding furniture.
“I was uncomfortable there at first because of the building layout,” Chad explains. Social studies was next to typing, for example, and the administrator was always looking over his (and everyone else’s) shoulder. “As a teacher, it took a lot of adapting. I found out how different people teach, and whether I even wanted to [continue to] teach.”
In addition to his day job, Chad was also back in a student role himself, earning a biology degree through Grand Valley, with many of his classes at NMC. He began to teach snowshoeing and softball in 1986, and in the summers taught at Camp Innisfree (now Camp Leelanau-Kohana), owned at that time by Gus and Paula Leinbach. Gus had been a legendary middle school science teacher in Ann Arbor, Chad’s hometown, and he finds the connection, while ephemeral, significant.
After three years as a substitute teacher, Chad parlayed his interest in photography into commercial work with John Robert Williams of Traverse City.
“I thoroughly enjoyed working for him, honing my darkroom skills. John loved teaching, and he also did a lot of color work outdoors, which I loved.”
As Kari was promoted several times at the college, the pair became East Hall’s residential advisor tag team, living in the dorm, overseeing staff and students, and handling situations at any hour of the day or night. Then Kari became pregnant with the couple’s first child, Cori, and they began looking for a more permanent home in Leelanau County. Once Kari’s maternity leave was over in the fall of 1990, the Kahlers made the decision to live frugally on her salary, while Chad would become a full-time, stay-at-home dad.
“It was painful to leave my photography job,” he relates. “At first, I didn’t want to be seen in public during the day,” He continues, “It’s all an attitude, a mindset. I feel that Kari and I are flexible, adaptable people. And family is a real priority for us. We were a one-car family for seven years, and I really learned the BATA schedule. I would bike with Cori over to the daycare at Glen Lake Reformed Church. In the winter, I’d put her in a box on a sled. Then Casey came along in 1994, and that prolonged my stay-at-home time.”
However, education was still in Chad’s sights. Since 1993, he’s taught volcanoes and mountain building, and dinosaurs, at NMC’s Extended Education Summer Classes. He began to tutor at the college’s just-opened Center for Learning; team-taught outdoor workshops at Glen Lake School with Alice Van Zoeren, including the fourth grade’s annual all-day fieldtrip to the school’s Benzonia Trail property; and worked on the high school’s Envirathon with biology teacher Karen Richard. He also began to drive a bus for Glen Lake as a substitute, primarily in the afternoons.
“I had to learn certain techniques to survive,” he laughs. “I learned what worked and what didn’t, what’s fair and honest. As a sub, students know you’re vulnerable,” he continues. “You’re concentrating on safety, the roads, controlling by the rearview mirror. I’m not one to yell or get upset. I’d pull the bus over; I’d say, ‘I’m getting paid by the hour, we can be here as long as it takes.’ In the beginning, we pulled over a lot. The school would call me, ‘Is the bus running late?’ I’d say, ‘No, we’re just learning how to be human beings today.’”
In 1999, he became a permanent driver, taking a big route that stretched from Burdickville through Empire. Seventh grader Danny Kornelis, a regular rider on Chad’s route, recalls, “Mr. Kahler was pretty cool. Sometimes he would pull the bus over and we’d have a quiet ride home. On the walls, he had quotes, stuff in history — then in the middle of the year, he put up magnets of prehistoric animals.”
“I had the 94B Bus Library,” Chad laughs, savoring the memory. Other on-board teaching tools included dictionaries, clipboards, pencils and books, so students could do homework on the long rides through the west side of the county. “We had a pretty good community on that bus, and it hurts to leave it,” he concludes.
He fully expected to be in his driver’s seat this fall, before hearing of Dick Plowman’s retirement after 33 years in the middle school science department.
“I thought, that’s the job I’ve always wanted,” he says. “I don’t have a big ego, so I was surprised when I got the job. I really enjoy the staff, I’ve felt so welcomed by them; it touches me so much. At the school open house, all the school bus drivers came down for a tour of my classroom.”
He continues, “Chad has the enthusiasm of someone much younger than himself. He’s committed to the same qualities [that Glen Lake espouses]: the environment, education, and the character-building of our kids, attributes you don’t often find.”
With colleague Heidi Barber, the new faculty member plans to teach an integrated course of study to seventh and eighth graders that will include a blend of life, earth, and physical sciences, so that, by year’s end, students will be fully immersed, and understand the connections between the sciences.
“The beauty of my environmental education allows me to tie everything together. I want students to see the big picture, to know that we’re all interrelated.” Chad plans a variety of approaches, utilizing textbooks; classroom models, displays, and projects; websites such as NOAA, NASA, and Stars and Telescopes; State of Michigan educational benchmarks; and especially, hands-on learning, using the school’s outdoor resources at Benzonia Trail, Port Oneida and Bow Lake.
Chad notes, “This summer, I came across my old geologist’s pick that I got in 1971, engraved, ‘Happy 16th Birthday, signed, Mom and Dad.’ That was the year my dad turned 50, and I got this job when I turned 50.” He regards it as a good sign.
“This was my dream job,” he says, one he has been preparing for in so many ways over the past three decades. “I’ve always been a teacher — I can’t hold it in!”