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It’s hard not to think of “Mr. Holland’s Opus” when a teacher’s career comes to an end. The movie stars Richard Dreyfuss as a music teacher who dreamed of a career as a composer, but sacrificed that dream to spend decades in the classroom teaching high school music.

The thing that strikes retiring Onalaska High School art teacher Ronn Kale about “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” though, is the main character is nothing special.

“The thing about that movie is that it showed Mr. Holland isn’t the exception. It’s the rule,” Kale said. “There are many Mr. Hollands and Miss Hollands in education today.”

Kale is nearing the end of his teaching career after 36 years, three in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he grew up, and the rest in Onalaska, including a year teaching art at Irving Pertzsch Elementary before moving on to the high school.

Kale had to be talked into sitting down for an interview. He didn’t want to be singled out, especially when other teachers were retiring from the high school and other Onalaska schools, and all of them had the same outlook on their teaching careers. They never thought of it as “going to work” — it was “going to school.”

Kale, who started college with an eye on becoming a professional artist instead of a teacher, came to UW-La Crosse one summer for a workshop and fell in love with the area — and the people, whom he found to be more warm and friendly than in the relative metropolis of Cedar Rapids.

While teaching on a year-to-year contract in Cedar Rapids, a small fish in a big pond, he heard about an opportunity to swim upstream to Onalaska. He interviewed in Onalaska and was impressed, but he had another interview in Marion, Iowa, before he heard back from Onalaska. Marion offered him a job on the spot and he signed the contract.

A few days later, Onalaska’s school superintendent at the time, Claude Deck, called with a job offer, only to find Kale committed to another job. Deck asked him who the superintendent was there.

It wasn’t long before the Marion superintendent called and told Kale he was out of a job. It turned out the two superintendents had been roommates in college and the Marion superintendent was willing to do his old buddy Deck a favor.

While in Cedar Rapids, Kale soaked up a few lessons on the importance of getting community support, strategizing to weather budget storms and being aware of the sometimes political nature of education. To be a good art teacher, a guy needs to know about a lot more than just art.

And Kale has been a more-than-good art teacher. In 1990, he was named the winner of a Kohl Excellence in Education Fellowship, and he’s been included six years (including the past three) in the annual “Who’s Who Among American Teachers” registry.

Another benchmark of Kale’s success as a teacher came in 1981, when OHS ranked fifth in the state in a Wisconsin Arts Education Association program recognizing exemplary school arts programs. Kale told Deck in his initial interview in 1975 that his goal was to make Onalaska High School’s art program — then only three years old — the best in the state within five years. He came very close.

Kale’s career at OHS also included other innovations and accomplishments, including helping establish the first high school gifted and talented program in the state, spearheading an area-wide arts festival that gave students a chance to learn from professionals and display their work.

He’s the first to say that what he was able to do as an art teacher had a lot to do with the district he was in, which offered him support from the school administration and community alike. In his resignation letter to the school board, he called Onalaska the “Camelot of education.”

“Our contemporary perception of Camelot is the ideal community working together for the common good of all, governed by visionary leadership,” Kale wrote. “I have always viewed the community (private and business sectors) of Onalaska as working together with the schools for the common good of all students.”

Onalaska also offered some great role models, teachers who served as mentors for Kale, like Roy Grade, Pete Hansen, Linda Mills, Gale Johnson and many others. “Onalaska’s been blessed with teachers who really care about kids,” Kale said.

Many of Kale’s students become professional artists in all manner of careers and some of them have followed in his footsteps and become teachers. That makes him feel good, he said, “but none of that makes me feel any better than a below-average student who made significant gains. It’s the kids that even just take little steps. You just kind of absorb some of that pride, some of that enthusiasm, and that keeps you going.”

Has it been a bed of roses for Kale, then, these past 36 years of teaching? Of course not. There have been frustrations, naturally, and over the past couple years chronic knee pain has been a major distraction.

After putting in 36 years, Kale could be done with education. He could devote all his time to make his own art — and he’s got his share of projects in the works — or to just having fun and enjoying his four grandchildren, ages 1 month to 12 years.

But he’s got another idea that will keep his hand in education. Kale hopes to launch a visual arts program to help students in western Wisconsin school districts where art programs aren’t as robust as they are in Onalaska and Holmen. He calls the program ELMO, short for Extended Learning and Mentoring Opportunity, and he’s working on writing grant applications to help get ELMO off the ground.

“It’s challenging, it’s exciting, it’s fresh,” Kale said. “If nothing else, I’ve got to give it a good shot.”

On the OHS seniors’ last day, Kale and retiring math teacher Leah Wisnewski led the seniors on the traditional senior walk through the hallways, despite his severe knee pain. Both were greeted by high fives and hugs from underclassmen lining the halls and afterward by members of the senior class, some misty-eyed with emotion.

Kale gets a little misty himself, thinking back on all these years of teaching kids about art and about believing in their own abilities.

“It’s been a real rewarding 33 years,” he said. “It’s been frustrating at times, but I wouldn’t do anything different.”

Contact Randy Erickson at randy.erickson@lee.net or 786-6812.