Dennis DeGara.
(Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
After 35 years of teaching, Bromfield School math teacher Dennis DeGara will retire June 18.
“I was fortunate that I always knew what I wanted to do,” DeGara told the Press. “I always wanted to be a teacher. It was just in my gut.”
The Athol native attended Worcester State College and taught in Fitchburg for four years before coming to Harvard in 1981.
“At that time, we taught fifth through twelfth grade. I would teach fifth grade and then come across the street to teach high school,” DeGara said. Since then, he has taught every grade from five to 12 and all math subjects except calculus.
As a new teacher, DeGara said, he appreciated the warm welcome he received from Harvard families, particularly the Spragues and the Hazels, who invited him for breakfast or for dinner before school events.
“If there were one teacher I had that I could choose for my kids to have, it would be Dennis DeGara,” said Alex Sprague, who was one of DeGara’s first algebra students at Bromfield. “He was always very fair and a great teacher. I could learn from him. Because he loved his subject, he could teach it in ways that others would, too.”
Sprague got part of his wish. DeGara taught pre-calculus to his oldest son, Sam, who graduated last week.
Once each term, DeGara declares D Donut Day and brings in doughnuts for all of his students—only from Dippin Donuts in Fitchburg, never the other place. But there is more to his success with students than doughnuts or his legendary coffee drinking.
DeGara’s teaching style is to do anything to engage students.
“You have to grab them and hold them,” DeGara said. “Entertainment, whatever works. You have to find something you like about every kid. If you can’t find that, you can’t succeed. They have a sixth sense.”
To a student who says, “I can’t do this,” DeGara said, his response is, “No, you’re having difficulty with it. The minute you say ‘I can’t do it,’ it doesn’t leave me any option.”
“If you’re honest with students, they’ll be honest with you,” DeGara said. “If you treat them with respect, they’ll treat you with respect.”
As for discipline, he says, “Your reputation precedes you, and you don’t have to do as much.”
DeGara said he doubts there is much students don’t know about him.
“They’ve asked me everything, though some things I don’t answer,” he said.
This year’s senior class yearbook dedication to DeGara, which he shares with Karen Deneen, who is also retiring, describes him as the “heart, soul, and hallway soundtrack” of the school.
There is one thing DeGara says students may not know.
“I’m nervous every day. How’s it going to go? Are they going to understand it? Have I chosen the right method? Am I going to get stumped? There’s always a bit of nervousness,” he said.
He is also uncomfortable when the focus is on him.
“I don’t like having my picture taken, I don’t want to see it,” he said. “I don’t like talking about myself. I don’t like reading about myself.”
While DeGara may not be comfortable talking about himself, he is more than able to speak from the heart to students, as he did to an audience of juniors and seniors after the mock car accident they witnessed the day before the prom. DeGara compassionately recalled how seniors ten years ago reacted to the death of a classmate who was killed in a car accident just before the day of their own prom.
One of the things DeGara is most proud of is having been asked to be a trustee of the Bromfield Trust. Besides overseeing the care of the original Bromfield School building and its lease to the town for the public library, a trustee is primarily responsible for interviewing Bromfield’s top students each year and awarding scholarships, a role he considers it an honor to have.
DeGara says he has seen the town grow and become more affluent. A real change he sees is how much busier students are today with all the activities they do: sports, private lessons, and other activities. “But the kids are the same. Kids have the same needs as they did 30 years ago,” he said. “I’d like to see if we could get the intimacy of the school back—every teacher knew every kid. It’s extremely difficult to do now. If you want to see the other kids, you’ve got to go to the things the kids enjoy doing outside of class—the plays, coffee house, sports. When you do that you get 100 percent back.”
Teaching has also changed, he said.
“It’s not getting easier,” DeGara said. “There are more demands, more paperwork, more meetings. But, if you like the excitement of seeing kids growing up, their eyes lighting up, the reward is right here in the classroom. Concentrate on that and try to forget the other stuff.”
DeGara has other advice for young teachers: “Always go to the prom. Never dance.”
With more time ahead, DeGara expects to travel a little.
“I always had a passion to go to Vietnam. I don’t know why,” he said.
He wants to visit Europe and he likes to go to Las Vegas, where he’s figured out the odds: “They’re against you.”
But DeGara is also looking forward to time to putter around his house in Fitchburg with a backlog of projects he hasn’t had time for. There’s plenty to do. But, “winter will be the shock,” he said.
Although DeGara may be retiring, he is not going far.
“I’ll be at away games and I’ll definitely be at the drama performances,” he said. “I’ve said I’ll stay in touch.”
“The students, I’m going to miss them all,” he said. “I came here, did the best I could, and now I’m leaving. I’ve never regretted one minute of teaching.”
