Effective Teachers, Mentors, and All the Rest

Senior year of high school was probably one of the biggest turning points in my life. My parents were recently divorced, my sister was off at college making me the oldest child in the house, and I was on the verge of the next stage of my life. A scary place to be. All of that would have been overwhelming had I not had one place in my life where I felt validated. One place where I made a connection with one person who would influence the rest of my life in a positive way.

It was my second time sitting in one of his classes. (No, I wasn't retaking a class. I had simply had him as a Freshman and again as a Senior because of staffing changes.) He=Mr. Keehan=a young English teacher able to connect with students and make them each feel capable... even students simply riding through classes pulling solid B's while trying to figure out the rest.

For the previous year I had simply been coasting in my classes. I had always been a pretty decent writer, even though my spelling was atrocious (p.s. I spelt this word wrong and spellchecked it to dictionary-worthiness. Guess my spelling still lacks a little sparkle). And I was in love with books so it wasn't difficult to get me to drift off into the worlds between the pages. But, being able to read and write didn't mean I was getting much out of my classes. Especially after the Western debacle with the English-but-not-really-since-he-was-only-there-for-the-football-team teacher. Yeah, that was a rough one. Or the class where I learned my writing was like a garden...flowery. I had lost interest. I wasn't connected. I turned in the papers to get the grade and move on. If I got B's no one would notice me. I would get the nice note next to my name on the report card and slide into the next class, the next year, the next grade and out of college. But I wouldn't have been here, studying to be an English teacher to change some other kid's life.

Mr. Keehan was able to change my mind about teachers, about English, and draw me back into the fold (though I wasn't following the shepherd blindly. Does the black sheep ever do that?). In his class I had the opportunity to interact with what I was reading, with my classmates, with my many levels of writing and use all of those influences to build my own meaning and create texts. Yes. Texts. Wouldn't have called any of the drivel I turned in previous to that year a text. But, because Mr. Keehan made me interact with my writing, share it with my peers and revise the shit out of it, I was proud of what I accomplished. Proud enough to still have a binder filled with all of the papers I completed for that class. Every single one of them. Red ink, sweat, tears, struggle, accomplishments and all.

Most of the papers I talk about in this class and that I talked about in 319 were created in the fertile learning environment Mr. Keehan had created in his classroom. Each time I entered that room I felt like I was headed home. Smell of coffee. Talk about authors. Reading. Writing. It was perfect. Now, sitting in a different classroom with a new P.O.V., I can see why Mr. Keehan created that classroom and made the effort to connect with each of his students. Through my teacher eyes I see the level of comfort each student feels as he or she walks into the room and falls into the community that has been built. With my teacher ears I hear the conversations pouring out over the pages of each novel, the connections made and the recognition given. In my teacher heart I know that every day I aspire to create a similar environment, and in my teacher mind I am slowly putting all the pieces together.

Mr. Keehan is my reason for teaching. He was an effective teacher. He was a mentor. And all the rest? Well, I suppose that's about to come.