You'll Find Woodling Down on the Farm

 "Making hay" means making the best of an opportunity during a short period of time.

While Donald Woodling made the best of his opportunity over 37 years with the Bensalem School District, he'll actually be making hay when he retires from the classroom this summer.

“I do that in the summers and unfortunately a lot the time I can't make hay because I have to go to work,” he said. “I have 10 acres in Pipersville and some smaller fields nearby.”

Woodling was raised on a farm and has been spending the last dozen years or so working as a farmer part-time. His switch from a farming avocation to more of a vocation has another upside for him.

“I don't feel like marking papers any more,” he said.

And in his new spare time, he'll be doing a lot more hunting and fishing.

“I've missed 37 years of the antlered deer season,” he said.

The 59-year-old Pipersville resident has spent his entire teaching career in the Bensalem district. The last six years he has taught gifted and talented science at Shafer Middle School. Before that, it was the high school and about 35 years at Neil Armstrong Middle School.

Asked about teaching at different levels, he said the only big difference is the content.

“Kids are the same,” said the married father of three. “You have kids who will do their homework and kids who don't do their homework. There are kids who are good in class and others who won't pay attention in class.”

He added, “You have very nice kids and you have kids you hope don't end up in jail.”

And while he said he gets to go more in depth with gifted and talented students, he never changed his approach.

“I taught everyone the same; I tried to challenge them,” he said.

He said the keys to teaching are patience and preparation.

“You've got to have patience and you have to have a routine down and know what you're going to do each day,” he said. “ Preparation is key.”

As for curriculum changes over 35 years, he said what goes around comes around.

“When I first started it was an inquiry based curriculum. We gradually changed to a more factual-based curriculum and now we're pretty much going full circle to inquiry based,” he said. “For me, I need a mixture of both.”

Woodling has also mixed athletics into his work, having coached wrestling and field hockey and served as a spring track official, which he plans to continue doing.

Asked about highlights of his career, Woodling said there were “lots of little moments.”

One, in particular, took place at Armstrong as eighth graders were asked to build a device that could stop a raw egg from breaking when dropped from a fairly high distance.

“I used to work as tree trimmer, so I hooked the device up to the gym ceiling,” he said. “Co-workers saw me swinging back and forth in the air. I remember one walking out and then coming back in and laughing at me.

“I like to do weird things.”

Indeed.

One of Superintendent Bill Gretzula's fondest memories of Woodling's career is seeing him let students tape him to a wall during an assembly.

“He is an incredible teacher and great motivator of students,” added Gretzula.