As Teacher Appreciation Week comes to a close, take a moment to salute former educator Gary Duschl.
Duschl, of Virginia Beach, entered the 2021 Guinness Book of World Records after fashioning the world’s longest gum-wrapper chain, which measures an impressive 106,810 feet.
He began his masterpiece in 1965, the same year American combat troops arrived in Vietnam, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” first aired.
Duschl’s website, gumwrapper.com, doesn’t indicate what subject he taught. However, he told me by email that he spent most of his working years as a general manager in several manufacturing operations. After he retired, he taught part-time, certifying painters and sandblasters for work on U.S. Navy vessels.
When I showed my students a short video about Duschl, many were impressed by his persistence in ripping each gum wrapper and folding it multiple times to forge the chain.
Some students sympathized with his wife. She shared how, early in their relationship, Duschl’s wrapper project snaked throughout their house. (He now stores his creation in specially constructed plexiglass display cases in just one room.)
At least a few students wondered what else he could have done with his time. This crossed my mind, too. Duschl told Guinness that his chain contains more than 2.5 million gum wrappers, and that he has fashioned at least 5.33 feet of chain each day for the last 55 years.
In that time, pondered Uncharitable Me, he could have learned multiple languages and several instruments, raised money for charity, taken up ballroom dancing ... and the list goes on.
But that’s Monday-morning quarterbacking. My house also is littered with the detritus of hobbies and interests — thousands of comic books, an acoustic guitar, several unfinished manuscripts — all of which took time that I could have spent on activities more productive, more profitable or both.
And I don’t need to flip through the latest Guinness volume to know that I’ve not broken a single record for doing anything.
Looking at the gum-wrapper chain from a different perspective, one can argue that Duschl is emblematic of what makes a teacher great.
First, he started his chain after a student showed him how to fold gum wrappers. This demonstrates a willingness by the teacher to learn. Education should be a two-way street.
Duschl made his chain from gum wrappers that his students donated. After all, there is no way that he chewed all that gum himself. (To do that, he estimates that he would have had to chew a stick of gum every 10 minutes, day and night, for the past five decades.) By soliciting student contributions, he gave them a voice and a stake in a successful outcome, as great teachers do.
His attention to detail is evident in many precise comparisons. The wrapper link, he notes, is as long as 356 football fields and as tall as 73 Empire State Buildings. Great teachers connect the known and the unknown, scaffolding what students can’t do with what they can and helping them to visualize the final product.
A page of Duschl’s website lists other people who have forged gum-wrapper chains, from 20,177 feet in Germany to just 20 feet in Pennsylvania. Like all great teachers, he is willing to share the credit.
Another section of Duschl’s website provides step-by-step instructions for making gum-wrapper links, along with an email link for more help. Great teachers give clear directions, clarifying and offering extra support as needed, and they urge collaboration.
So, raise a pack of Wrigley’s in honor of Duschl. All educators should aspire to show students, by word and deed, the value of blazing their own trails and not folding under pressure.
Or, in Duschl’s case, folding — again, and again, and again.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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