And not only kicking yourself, but wondering why you'd stayed there when all you got was grief for it, and yet knowing you'd act the same way if the situation happened again?
Did you ever feel like P. was hell-bent on testing you in the fire? Or was he like that with everyone?
I'd like to think that's what he was trying. Certainly there were other moments that suggested the same thing, in and outside of class. He did zero in on most students' strengths and weaknesses and had an uncanny ability to know who to choose when it came time to argue a point or respond to another student's statement, but he clearly had his favorites. A lot of students hovered around him -- mostly girls, since he was 30ish and hip and wickedly sarcastic and very good-looking in a George Clooney kind of way -- and he was the fantastic sort of teacher who wasn't afraid to "get personal" with his classes, made up nicknames for people and shared his own opinions and decorated his classroom and so forth, but he and I and a small group of guys who worked on the newspaper he took over junior year had a fairly close and complicated relationship that continued years beyond high school and extended to my sister (who forged one in her own right and amused him twice as much I think). He made some incisive remarks over the years and wrote me a letter at graduation (he had one for each of the five of us on the newspaper staff) that I still keep under my bed.
Could go on about how I only found a comparable professor at college a month before I graduated, but this isn't really the place. You know who I mean though.
And P. would have torn apart anyone who tried "I care about the poor people of the world." He was our school's poster child (poster teacher?) for activism, organized annual charity events for students, decried the horrors of fois gras and Concord jets, and once devoted a class to debating Peter Singer's infamous article about the baby on the train tracks and how we are all selfish hypocrites.
Did you ever feel like P. was hell-bent on testing you in the fire? Or was he like that with everyone?
I'd like to think that's what he was trying. Certainly there were other moments that suggested the same thing, in and outside of class. He did zero in on most students' strengths and weaknesses and had an uncanny ability to know who to choose when it came time to argue a point or respond to another student's statement, but he clearly had his favorites. A lot of students hovered around him -- mostly girls, since he was 30ish and hip and wickedly sarcastic and very good-looking in a George Clooney kind of way -- and he was the fantastic sort of teacher who wasn't afraid to "get personal" with his classes, made up nicknames for people and shared his own opinions and decorated his classroom and so forth, but he and I and a small group of guys who worked on the newspaper he took over junior year had a fairly close and complicated relationship that continued years beyond high school and extended to my sister (who forged one in her own right and amused him twice as much I think). He made some incisive remarks over the years and wrote me a letter at graduation (he had one for each of the five of us on the newspaper staff) that I still keep under my bed.
Could go on about how I only found a comparable professor at college a month before I graduated, but this isn't really the place. You know who I mean though.
And P. would have torn apart anyone who tried "I care about the poor people of the world." He was our school's poster child (poster teacher?) for activism, organized annual charity events for students, decried the horrors of fois gras and Concord jets, and once devoted a class to debating Peter Singer's infamous article about the baby on the train tracks and how we are all selfish hypocrites.
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