He was in my very first high school class, a wiry, little guy behind a lectern, with gravity-defying hair and feverish-looking eyes. He wasn’t much taller than the lectern and it probably weighed more than he did.  The stranger stared at us briefly before introducing himself as Mr. S___, taking the roll and passing out Literature text books.  “Another first-year teacher,” I thought with dismay,”this class will eat him alive.”  Then the little man barked out an order and half the class jumped. For a small man, this guy’s voice was loud. “Mr. So-and-So” he boomed at one of the better-behaved boys in class, “What have you got there?  Bring it to me.”  The poor kid named slunk his way toward the front of the class while I cowered in my seat and revised my opinion of the instructor. This guy would control the class but I didn’t like him and doubted if I’d learn much from him either. Little did I know I was facing the greatest teacher I’ve ever meet.

Mr. S. taught my favorite subject, English, but I never would have told him something that personal. The man was far too intimidating.  We were in an era when teachers were supposed to relax a little and relate to the kids but Mr. S. didn’t get the memo.  Instead he barked out remarks and questions in class and when he grinned at us from behind his lectern, he looked like a wolf eyeing his prey.  He admitted to having daily debates with the “fun” English instructor in school about which was the better teaching tool, trust or fear. Mr. S. held out for fear and it worked; he scared the spit out of me.

Sophomore collection of short stories. Does my high school still want it back?

Funny thing was, this strange little guy taught an interesting class.  For one thing, he got us to think about what we read. Instead of focusing on terms like “protagonist” and “plot”, Mr. S. forced us to identify the ideas in stories and then debate those with him in class. Some of those ideas had obvious answers, like, “What would you rather have, security or freedom?” Mr. S. always took the contrary side of an issue like this and, as I recall, he always won the debates. When we insisted Americans preferred freedom, he’d point out the ways our society had opted for security instead. Keeping up in his class meant using your wits and even the most disinterested students started getting involved.  Then, he taught us how to listen.

Sometime in my sophomore year, I began to get irritated over the “less-than-excellent” grades I earned in his class.  I wasn’t interested in keeping a high GPA but it irked me to get “Bs” in one of the few subjects I usually aced. So, when written tests were given, I tried to write great essays, scouring meaning out of the text and paragraphs out of my soul.  Then I’d get another B and someone else’s answer would be read out in class. I sweated blood over the next essay test… and my friend Mindy’s answer was read aloud instead.  On the way home, I showed her my paper and asked her why he picked her essay answer over mine. “Mine answered his question.” she said.

In my junior year but I started paying attention to Mr. S.’s lectures and I realized something; we might debate profound ideas in the text but the subject we studied was literature and he tested us on specific literary techniques and criteria we discussed during class. I started paying attention to what the man said he wanted in an answer. I  wrote responses to his questions.  I started getting As.

By my senior year, I had relaxed enough to appreciate Mr. S.’s teaching methods and he seemed to unbend just a bit. His grins weren’t just a demanding instructor’s delight in catching students unprepared, he loved seeing us use our brains. Although some of his formality remained, we began to glimpse his sense of humor and we learned he loved when we’d “forget” to return our text books at the end of term.  He said he measured a book’s popularity by how few copies came back to the school.  (Mr. S., if you see this, I still have two of my short-story collections as well as my copy of Candide.  I still love them and read them; I just have to be careful because the pages are brittle and some of the covers are gone.)  Then, Mr. S. left our school system the same spring that our class graduated. I never found the chance or nerve to thank him for the impact he had on me.  But I’ve felt his influence ever since.

Over the years, I’ve attended more than a dozen schools and probably studied under a hundred different teachers.  Most were bright, some were kind and I even made friends with a few.  But the greatest teacher I ever met taught me to fall in love with a subject.  He changed me from someone who enjoyed reading as entertainment to one who reveres prose as an art.