My Teachers

It’s National Teacher Appreciation week – and I appreciate it!!!  I spent twenty-eight years in the classroom (and another eight in the front office) so I know a bit about schools and teachers.  As the “Dean of Students”, I grew to respect even more what my compatriots did “when they could close the hallway door”.  There were miracles of interaction, intervention, and inspiration. 

But behind every teacher is sixteen years or more of being taught.  We were students first, and it’s out of those experiences that we came into “our” classrooms.  Hopefully, we were inspired by the great teachers we had.  And we also learned from those teachers who, for whatever reason, failed to make the mark.  For me, there were two teachers that made a tremendous impact on my life, literally forming my career.

Van Buren

The first will be a surprise to those who know me.  I was an eighth grader in Van Buren Junior High School in Kettering, Ohio, when I discovered the impact that a great teacher can have.  I was a “math block” kid.  Put me in a social studies or English class, and I would sail along.  Even in biological sciences I did fine.  But put a chalkboard and a math equation in the front of the room, and I was bound to struggle.

I don’t know where that came from. Dad and my oldest sister were math whizzes, but for me math was always hard.  Perhaps it was because math, like foreign languages and learning a musical instrument, required drilling and repetition to “get”.  And I was never a great driller – ask my trumpet teacher.

And then there was my seventh grade math teacher, the model of the teacher I never – ever – ever wanted to be.  She was old (probably my age now), and an old-school teacher.  She had no problem taking a kid in the hall and shoving him up against the locker to make her point: doing social studies in math class was unacceptable.  But more importantly, she could take a subject that I didn’t like, and make it as boring as possible.  By the end of that year in math, I was ready to never see a number again.

Coach Weikert

Then the next year, I was in Mr. Weikert’s class.  Doug Weikert was a young teacher, in his early twenties when I had him.  And he found a way to make math “easy” and understandable.  But more importantly, Mr. Weikert cared about you – and because he did, you wanted to learn and improve for him. 

I can’t say I got “A’s” in math all year, but I did manage to get ‘B’s.  And more importantly, I discovered that a good teacher can overcome all sorts of obstacles, including “math blocks” and the indentation of a locker combination on a thirteen year old’s spine.  

It didn’t hurt that he was a track coach, though I didn’t get to run for him until the next year.  And looking back at that, I wonder how much that influenced what I did in my career.  After I left his class, I fell back into “math block” world. No math teacher ever really measured up to him.  But he made me see what was possible.

We moved out of Kettering after ninth grade, and the next time I saw Coach Weikert, it was at the State Track Coaches Clinic.  He was the track coach at Kettering’s Fairmont High School by then, and I was into my career at Watkins.  And even later, I discovered that he painted the markings on tracks for his “summer job”.  One summer I found him on “my” track here in Pataskala.  Somewhere in all of that I know I thanked him for his example, but I don’t think I made too big a deal of it.  I should have.

Doug Weikert passed away in 2015, young at sixty-eight.  But he always served as the example for me of what one teacher could do by “just” doing his job.  Listening to folks from the Dayton area, I know he made a whole lot of people better students, athletes, and human beings as well.

Wyoming

The teacher who most impacted my life was in my senior year of high school.  I was a budding student and politician, steeped in the middle of the Watergate crisis.  And then I met Ms. Bolton (it was definitely Ms. not Miss), fresh from Wooster College.  Eve was an amazing teacher, inspiring in the classroom.  And she was an amazing mentor, willing to introduce a student into the “real world” of politics.  She campaigned for Ed Muskie in 1972, and was just beginning her long alternative career in Cincinnati politics as well as teaching at Wyoming High School.  She’s still in elective office today, forty-six years later.

So I learned from her in the classroom, and I learned even more about politics on the Frank Davis for Juvenile Court campaign and later on Eve’s own campaigns for office.  And she even got me involved in her first years of creating the now legendary Wyoming High School drama department.  

Eve Bolton inspired me as a teacher, and as a political mentor.  She taught me, more than anything, that if you want something, you’ve got to work for it.  And she served as a “safe haven”.  In an era where America was politically divided as much as it is today, I was on the “wrong side” of politics for many of the Wyoming social studies staff.  Eve couldn’t protect me from my own statements in Mr. Wagner’s government class, but she did let me know that while my timing was terrible, my sentiments weren’t “wrong”.  

When I went into a classroom as a young teacher, I wanted to teach like Eve.  I wanted to inspire kids, to make them feel like that could achieve whatever they dreamed.  I hope I came close.  If I did, it was because of the inspiration of Eve Bolton.

And I also took Eve’s example for building a school program.  She showed me that you could be a track athlete, a swimmer, a member of the Thespian society and on the State Social Studies team.  She supported the football team with the same enthusiasm as the next one-act play done “in the round” in the school cafeteria.  And she made sure students had access to both.

My last political campaign was for Eve, as manager of her first run for Cincinnati City Council.  I then determined to leave my brief sojourn at Law School, and go back to teaching at Watkins.  It was 1982, and we lost contact, so I never really got the opportunity to tell her how much she influenced my life.  I hope somehow this essay finds its way to her – I just want to say thank you for setting the example for my career and my life.  You were THE teacher that made a difference.  

I definitely appreciate it.