Inspirational Teacher Meme

Astraea has tagged me for a meme about inspirational teachers.

As far as in-the-classroom types, I have three that jump to mind immediately.

Mr. Gastman

He was my Language Arts and Resources teacher, and I was his student aid at Cleveland Middle School. Bits I remember of him: he had a way he walked, a sort of measured lope, so that you could tell it was him even from very very far away. He was always chewing on a piece of raw ginger. He was the first person I ever knew who observed the Jewish high holy days. He taught me what it meant to be a critical thinker, to question everything, and to have fun while doing it. He also gave me my first editing credit. I was one of a handful of students who tested many of the problems in a creative problem solving workbook he wrote. He gave me an introduction to philosophy and a tiny peek into what it might mean to be an academic, who worked to study ideas.

We kept in touch for a few years after I went on to high school. I wrote him notes about my classes and whatnot every few months. Each Christmas and birthday, he sent me some beautiful little card or another, often these gorgeous embossed, white-paper things, or contraptions of intricate paper cutting. And no, he was not creepy or inappropriate. Get your brain out of the gutter.

I feel certain that he would continue to be a dear friend if he had not taken his life. I was 17, I think. Or perhaps I’d just turned 18, when a friend (also a former student of Mr. G.) called to tearfully tell me that he’d committed suicide. His memorial was filled with former and present students, colleagues, and friends, who all tearfully told stories, sang songs, recited poetry, in celebration of the man who asked me “Is it possible to think of Nothing?” and didn’t blink twice when I suggested that I teach myself to speak Hawaiian for no other reason than that I was curious about it.

Dr. Dan Pinti

When I met Dr. Pinti at New Mexico State University, I was a biochemistry major, on a path to med school or research. I signed up for an Honors Class he was teaching, Arthurian Literature, I think. Pinti was charmingly self-effacing, critically challenging, and made medieval literature seem alive and real and relevant. He was pleasantly surprised to find a science major who was both interested in old books and astute in engaging high-end critical questions (his words, not mine). He invited me to consider his Chaucer course the following semester. The Chaucer course was an unusual choice for anyone other than English Majors. I declared a double-major and jumped right in. I had several classes with Dr. Pinti over the new three years. Chaucer, Dante, a medieval lit. seminar, and independent study in Anglo-Saxon. I was his research assistant for a semester, and he gave me my second editing credit in the acknowledgements to his book on Chaucer. (I’m seeing a trend developing here: book acknowledgements and foreign languages). And he made me an official heir of his academic legacy by giving me a copy of Brights’ Anglo-Saxon Reader that had been given to him by a professor of his. He was my Honors Thesis advisor, and attended my wedding. I never got a chance to hear him play guitar though. Cheers to you, Dr. P.! Up there at cold and snowy Niagara. :)

Dr. Alice Sheppard

As a graduate student, I encountered a lot of different types of professors. Dr. Sheppard was the first prof I met. We had coffee. She asked a lot of direct questions. She intimidated the hell out of me. Her questions were hard, her expectations were high, but her enthusiasm and her drive zinged off of her and infected me with a similar energy. I worked with her in and out of several years. Anglio-Saxon lit. (there’s another language one), a slog through Beowulf, among other things (it’s funny to me that though the grad courses are my most recent, they run together and are the most difficult to tease out one from the other). When I thought I was making a bold move, she offered a kind of dual advice, providing insight into where I needed to be cautious and where I needed to jump head-first. She was my first choice for a dissertation advisor, though contemplation about my exact area of study, and deference to the power and influence of more established profs steered me elsewhere for a director. Like Mr. G., Alice did not laugh at my more bizarre ideas, but engaged the critical value and possibilities of the ideas with me.

This is the kind of teacher I wanted to be. Energetic, serious (with a liberal dash of fun), smart and intimidating but also accessible and not infallible. She was also the first among my profs to make me feel like academic work was sexy. There was something exciting about the power and the play of words and an engagment with them in a critical way. And also that our critical work didn’t have to stop at the edges of the page or the door of the classroom. Our critical tools gave us insight into the political and cultural structures around us, insight that could give us power and pleasure and understanding.

Though she has left academics to become a dancer, I have no doubt that Alice continues to be a thinker and critic of ideas and structures. And I have no doubt that she is still intimidating as hell. :) Cheers Alice!

Others

I had planned to continue to discuss specific inspirational teachers of the non-classroom type, but I’m clearly too babbly. Know though that all of you who have given me a way to understand the world in a different way, or who have given me a new skill, I appreciate you all as well. Oh there are knitters and farmers and teachers and dj’s and moms and family members and other professors that are worthy of admiration and praise.