Over the past couple weeks I have been struggling with the loss of a former professor. He was an inspiration to my teaching style and I didn't even realize how much of an inspiration he was until he was gone. Isn't that how it is with all losses?
I had heard of his passing earlier in the year and was saddened to hear of it. A couple weeks ago I ended up looking him up on the Internet and ran into his last lecture on YouTube. I got through the first 10 minutes and completely broke down.
He's been suffering from a rare form of cancer for several years. In the last year or so of his life the cancer became aggressive. He lost his femur and parts of both lungs because of the cancer.
When I watched the video I I see an old version of the professor that I remember from his first semester on campus. I remember having him for American Urban Development, a class that talks about how cities were developed with the migration of the rich in the inner city to the suburbs. I will always remember the word hinterland from that course.
He came to us from the north west corner of the country. I will never forget the day that he found out from us that Edinboro is in tornado alley for Northwest PA. The look of sheer terror on his face was priceless. I didn't realize the time but that class would end up shaping my teaching style in the future.
He used humor in the classroom as a way to keep his students engaged and he used voices, bad voices, to get his point across. I find myself doing these things in my class on a daily basis to keep my high schoolers on task.
I'll never forget the day that he called me out in class for the shirt that I was wearing. You see when I had him for the second time for class I ended up having to work part time in the cafeteria because my car had died and I had to get a new one. I had to work the lunch shift and class and work overlapped by a couple minutes. I had talk to him at the beginning of the semester and he was fine with me coming in a couple minutes late to class every day. Unfortunately for me, my classmates made sure that the only empty seat was on the other side of the room from the door so I had to interrupt class every single time. On this particular day I had a dress shirt that had a print on the front of it but was black on the collar and in the back. As I walked in the class that day as usual he said. "and you all know Mr. McVitty", but he added, "and his shirt from the 80s". I actually laughed out loud but apparently several of my classmates didn't understand that we joked with each other.
I didn't think anything of it until the next week when we came to class he presented me with a gift certificate for Cole's and I wanted to make sure that the class me that he was just kidding around with me and my clothing. Luckily for me I was able to get him back by asking when he handed me the gift certificate, "is this for a new shirt?"
I also find myself using his techniques in my honors humanities class when it comes to their midterm and their final exam. Any test I ever took for him was an essay test in the good old blue book. What was unique was that we were given the questions a week ahead of the exam. Actually the students in each class came up with five questions for the essay exam the following week. We choose one of the questions to answer and had one week to prep what we wanted to say. This took a ton of stress off of our tests. This technique ended up making the midterm and final exam for honors Art Humanities two of the most powerful exams I've ever given.
In the past couple weeks as I continue to grapple with his passing I found out that he wrote several books in the last year's of his life. Of course I've gone out and bought most of them and been reading through them hearing his voice and seeing the glint in his eye as he tells bad jokes and makes the funny voices as he's writing. I was able to finish his last lecture and at the end instead of seeing the old dying man I could see my professor.
The moral of the story is, as a teacher you never know where your inspirations will come from. Don't be afraid to steal ideas from teachers and professors that you see or have seen because chances are they've done it for a while and have gone through a trial and error period to arrive at their teaching style.
Realize also that you may be an inspiration to A student sitting in your classroom. I hope I inspire at least one student in my career as that is the greatest compliment I will ever receive as an educator. I regret not being able to tell my professor what an inspiration he was for me as an educator.
I dedicate this post to Dr. Joseph Laythe.
