Taking an ‘irregular path’ to teaching career

To some Petaluma students and their families, Tom Joynt is the best friend they ever had. A career teacher, administrator and director of alternative education, he advocated for the kids who don’t fit into the typical public-school setting and adamantly supported a suitable education for every student and a proper setting and context for learning they can understand.

His own education served as a template for his commitment to the students who struggled with school, because he struggled too. A 50-year resident of Sonoma County, the good-natured and compassionate Joynt followed an irregular path of employment before reaching his calling.

“I went to a one-room school, in Illinois, where I had no academic success,” Joynt once told an Argus-Courier journalist. “I had trouble sitting still and they were not able to meet my needs. That probably makes me more patient with kids having difficulty in school.”

He believes that it only takes one person in the life of a student to make a difference, and for many students, he was that person.

His road to fulfillment began in Polo, Illinois, where he lived with his mother and stepfather on his grandmother’s farm, after moving there from Los Angeles. His mother and grandmother were teachers at a one-room country schoolhouse.

“Back there,” he said, “life was significantly more subdued than out here.”

He took psychology courses in college and did factory work before landing a job working with severely disabled children at a state hospital.

“It was one of the best jobs I ever had,” he said.

Realizing he was destined to be drafted during the Vietnam conflict, he chose to enlist in the Army. Trained as a medic, he was stationed at San Francisco’s Letterman Hospital, where he worked as a psych-tech. More importantly, that’s the city where he met his future wife, Marcia, who worked at the Wax Museum. After transferring to Hawaii, the couple married in 1966.

After his time in the service, he returned to a job at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley.

“I used my Veterans Administration benefits to attend Sonoma State College, where I got my bachelor’s degree in psychology and my teaching credential,” Joynt said. “I went into teaching for several reasons. It gave me daily contact with children and offered me the opportunity to see what else I could get into. I have a great belief in potential and stability.”

He taught at Oak Grove School in Graton, before transferring to McDowell School in 1973, where he helped create the cluster program. He then moved to Cherry Valley School and to Penngrove School, where he began a dual career as a weekend disc jockey for KVRE radio in Santa Rosa. His popular Sunday morning show, “Off the Charts,” specialized in newly released recordings from smaller record labels.

“I have a rich imagination and can talk like Donald Duck,” he said of his on-air persona.

Joynt took a leave of absence from teaching to focus on radio advertising sales, which led to him becoming KVRE’s advertising sales manager.

“The only reason I left teaching was to sell radio advertising,” he said. After one year he decided not to continue in radio and returned to Penngrove, where he taught fourth grade for three years.

In the mid-1980s, Joynt took over the Transition Program at Kenilworth Junior High. It was designed for students who had failed eighth grade and were again attempting to pass. Two years later he returned to Cherry Valley, where he was teaching fourth grade when a huge fire destroyed four classrooms, including his, in December 1988.

“When I lost my classroom, there was a huge outpouring of community support,” he said. “They even replaced my rock tumbler.”

Shortly after that, interested in increasing his income, Joynt enrolled at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, where he earned an administrative credential and master’s degree in educational administration. He then served as administrative assistant at Old Adobe, La Tercera and Miwok Valley, and principal at Miwok Valley, before advancing to San Antonio High as director of alternative education.

In 2003, Joynt joined the Sonoma County Office of Education, where he worked to guarantee the rights of adjudicated youth. He retired in 2013.

Throughout his time in Petaluma, Joynt has been a volunteer with COTS and the Drug Abuse Resistance Program, and a positive force with countless community events such as the River Festival and the annual Butter and Eggs Day Parade, where he’s served as announcer for 30 years. He also supports the Miracle League North Bay, which serves children who are in need of support physically or emotionally and unable to compete in conventional baseball leagues. The teams play at Lucchesi Park on custom designed turf.

Joynt also enjoys nature and being outdoors.

“For fun, we like to travel. It’s been one of the most rewarding things about retirement. We’ve been to Europe and Japan, which was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. And, gardening is my passion,” he adds. “I enjoy growing good tomatoes. I’m a friend of the earth.”

Harlan Osborne’s “Toolin’ Around Town” runs the second and fourth Fridays of the month in the Argus-Courier. You can contact him at harlan@sonic.net.