Retired teacher gets lessons in Iraq

Terry Conder gave up the classroom for bomb blasts and encounters with terrorists.

"The joke is that I could teach or I could go to Iraq," said Conder, who recently retired from the Clark County School District after 32 years of teaching English.

While serving in Iraq as a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard, Conder, 56, felt a professional liberation foreign from his work experience in the school district.

For nine months in 2010, Conder was the official spokesman for U.S. Special Forces, including the Green Berets and the Navy SEALS, who embraced him as a fellow professional and let him do his job his way.

"It was unbelievably refreshing to make all the decisions that affected my life, unlike the end of my teaching career where the majority of decisions were made by someone else," said Conder, a former teacher at Eldorado High School.

"In the school district, everything comes from above," he said. "This is the lesson plan you're going to use. This is the format you're going to write it in. You're going to use this grading book. I'm not exaggerating."

Michael Rodriguez, a spokesman for the district, said teachers are told to follow the curriculum but said they are given latitude on how they teach.

Ruben Murillo, president of the teachers union, the Clark County Education Association, said Conder's complaint is "very common and becoming more common everyday."

Many principals know only one style of management and "that's top down," Murillo said.

Because of staffing problems related to reductions in school funding, Murillo believes many people become school administrators without adequate preparation.

While he "absolutely" loved teaching, calling it the "best job in the world," Conder complained that teachers are increasingly treated with condescension, even from the district's hired consultants.

CHILDREN ARE ELDORADO GRADS

Two years ago, a consultant asked the Eldorado High School staff if they would ever send their children there.

Eldorado, near Washington Avenue and Nellis Boulevard, is often tarred as a failure for not showing "adequate yearly progress" under No Child Left Behind, the federal school accountability law.

The school consultant was "trying to imply this school is so awful, that certainly none of you would want your kids to come to this school," Conder said. "That was his big opening and he just insulted me."

Conder and his wife Carol's three children all graduated from Eldorado. Their son, Kyle, 28, is a lawyer and the NCAA compliance officer for the University of Southern California. Their daughter, Kendall, 26, is finishing medical school at Des Moines University. Their youngest daughter, Kristin, 23, is completing a master's degree in athletic administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Because his kids are so successful, Conder said he often wonders, "If (Eldorado) is such a terrible school, how did that happen?"

Conder was the school's newspaper adviser while also teaching composition and classic novels such as "Catcher in the Rye."

As a member of the National Guard, Conder originally was supposed to go to Haiti in response to last year's earthquake. While waiting in Texas for his deployment, he learned of the opportunity in Iraq and volunteered as a professional challenge.

Conder had served in an earlier overseas mission as a public affairs officer for the international peacekeeping force in Bosnia in the mid-1990s.

COURT-MARTIAL TRIALS

In Iraq, one of Conder's first assignments was assisting media coverage of the court-martial trials of three Navy SEALs accused of mistreating an Iraqi prisoner. They were all acquitted.

During the trial, Conder said it was "surreal" to be so close to their accuser, Ahmed Hashim Abed, who is suspected of plotting an ambush on Blackwater security contractors in Fallujah in 2004. The hanging of the contractors' charred corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River was a media sensation.

During his stint in 2010, Conder worked with media from all the world, noting that Chinese reporters in particular were very good. He helped Washington Post reporter Ernesto Londono get an interview with Brig. General Patrick M. Higgins, commander of the Special Forces.

While major combat operations had ended, Higgins told the reporter that extremist groups were still active in Iraq.

The article was "not a home run for us from the Army's point of view, but it was factual," Conder said.

After the article ran, the general turned down follow-up requests from the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Foreign correspondents serving in Iraq wouldn't comment for this story, saying it was nothing personal but they could not "assess a flak on the record."

Because the Special Forces' have an attitude of "quiet professionalism," they shy away from publicity. Conder had a difficult time getting stories out.

After the Special Forces rounded up terrorists who coordinated an attack on a kids' soccer game, Conder remembered thinking, "Gosh darn it, that story should come out. Their attitude is like, 'What difference does it make. We got them.' "

Once, in downtown Baghdad, Conder instinctively dropped to the ground to avoid any shrapnel from a bomb blast. Afterward, he felt foolish because the explosion had been far away and others were standing around.

In October, Conder realized his former colleagues in Las Vegas are not always safe when physics teacher Timothy Vanderbosch was slain while walking to Eldorado. The news made the military serving in Iraq very angry.

"People were fired up over it. We're defending America, making the world more secure, yet you can't even walk down the street (in Las Vegas)," Conder said. "That was the ultimate irony."

Contact reporter James Haug at jhaug@reviewjournal.com or 702-374-7917.