Capuchino High Math Teacher Retires After 40 Years in Classroom

Capuchino High math teacher Bernard Farges retired last week after 40 years as an educator.

Farges, who started his teaching career in 1971 in France, was beloved by many of his students and has a long history in the math field. He had been a math teacher at Cap since 2001. But before then, he worked as a private school teacher and public school teacher in San Francisco; he taught classes at Chabot College, San Francisco State University and U.C. Berkeley Extension; and he was the director of San Francisco Project 2061, one of six centers throughout the country that worked to improve mathematics, science and technology education in the United States.

We caught up with Farges for a Q&A during his last days as a teacher.

San Bruno Patch: Where did you get your start as a teacher? And what made you want to become a teacher?

Bernard Farges: I started teaching mathematics in Paris, France. I started teaching in San Francisco in 1973. I became a mathematics teacher because I love to communicate and I love mathematics. Helping students connect the dots between ideas and construct their understanding of mathematical concepts and skills has always been very fulfilling. Likewise, collaborating with colleagues to improve the quality of instruction and student understanding has been very stimulating and rewarding.

Patch: What has been the best part about being a teacher?

Farges: From a classroom perspective, the best part about being a teacher has been experiencing the students’ excitement as they understand something for the first time or solve a problem after struggling to find the solution. It is also very gratifying to foster the attitudes and values of curiosity, openness to new ideas and skepticism as students learn about an area of knowledge.

Patch: A lot has changed in our education system over the years, and being a teacher is probably one of the hardest jobs because of that. What kind of changes have you seen over the years, and how have you been able to adapt to them?

Farges: Over the years, I have seen the education pendulum swing a couple of times between teaching for memorization and teaching for understanding as well as moving back and forth between standards and standardization. The latest swing has been very difficult to adapt to because the emphasis on testing has been very detrimental to teaching in-depth understanding of a particular concept.

Learning takes time. Students should receive feedback and take the time to reflect on the feedback to make adjustments and try again, a requirement that is neglected by most examinations, especially finals. Contrary to rote-learning, which only yields short-lived knowledge of hundreds of details, team project-based learning may cut into the global number of student learning goals, but students will remember forever their learning experience because it provides both context and purpose for learning. Learning while addressing a concrete challenge responds to the fundamentally fair student question: “Why do we have to learn that stuff?”

Patch: What will you miss most about being in the classroom?

Farges: What I will miss most about being in the classroom is the transformative power of collective student energy. Students bring their existing ideas and personal experiences to the classroom, thereby creating many windows of opportunity for discourse. Students bring life—their lives—to the classroom, and this creates many venues for authentic communication and real learning.

Patch: Do you have any favorite memories about being at Cap?

Farges: My favorite memories about being at Cap include exchanging jokes with students during the learning process, seeing a failing student radically changing her attitude mid-semester and passing my class with success, receiving a thank you card from a deaf student I helped prepare for the CAHSEE, observing how differently a student can behave whether in the classroom or on a basketball court, laughing heartedly during the end-of-the-year breakfast teacher-skits and watching the 2012 senior send-off presentation, receiving a poster with thank you comments from my last cohort of International Baccalaureate students, and celebrating my retirement at a party with dear colleagues.

Patch: Do you have any plans for retirement?

Farges: The first step of my plan for retirement is not having any plans. Focusing on how I'm feeling at the present moment will guide me to choose the most appropriate activity at that moment, whether it is walking, swimming, riding a bicycle, doing yoga, playing the guitar, reading, cooking or seeing friends. Generally speaking, I would like to let my body recover to its own rhythm and take the time to be more contemplative.

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