After 37 years of teaching, and 23 in total at Oak Park High School, English teacher Roland Herberg is ready to retire. Herberg’s teaching career began at Grant High School in the San Fernando Valley, where he taught for 14 years. 

“I started out in a low-performance school and that was a very rewarding experience because you really feel like you’re contributing to helping with the kids,” Herberg said.

With his experience, Herberg has been able to carry out many lessons he has learned along his journey in education.

“I learned that it works better for everyone to grade students on what you have taught them, not on what you expect them to know,” Herberg said. “There is a big difference, and doing this addresses one of the major issues, if not the major issue, students have with teachers: fairness.” 

His passion for fairness made a mark when participating in Model United Nations, a program that allows students to understand their status as world citizens and the problems that countries face around the world. Herberg also had extensive involvement in the journalism program, where he held the role of an adviser. Taking the initiative to fully immerse himself in the role, Herberg attended the Knight Summer Fellowship at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

“The journalism professors there spent a significant amount of time teaching us all the rights students have in a journalism class that produces the school newspaper, far more rights than I had known before,” Herberg said.  

Although he no longer participates in these extracurriculars, he looks back on them fondly and with gratitude for the knowledge he received from the experiences. Herberg still holds writing for the media in high regard, advising students to pursue that path.

“In the 20th century, many great writers got their start in journalism such as Hemingway and Vonnegut and Didion. In fact, few great writers majored in English; that’s why I tell students if they want to be a writer, it is better to major in journalism, that’s where you do more actual writing that is transferable to fiction,” Herberg said.

Known across campus as the senior AP Lit teacher, Herberg leaves alongside the graduating class of 2023, a group of kids that he commends for their perseverance.

“[The graduating class has] gone through a lot of hardship with COVID and they’ve rebounded really well and it’s been a difficult situation for them. When I teach ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ Hemingway says, ‘every generation is a lost generation’ because every generation goes through some sort of emotional or psychological turmoil and it certainly was true of the kids this year,” Herberg said. 

As he departs from OPHS, Herberg leaves behind a legacy of positively impacting students and transforming them into lifelong learners.

“The more I taught the less important grades were to the process of learning. In fact, to be honest, in many cases, I perceive grading as detrimental to creativity, curiosity and an innate love of learning,” Herberg said.

His absence, the end of a two-decade era, will be felt by current students, former students and faculty.

“[I have] never known of a teacher that is so universally liked by students and has actual love of the academics of the class,” former student Gianna Cavarozzi, who graduated with the class of 2022, said. 

Herberg plans on exploring new things after retirement and looks forward to whatever adventures come to him in spontaneity.