in praise of the gatekeeper

 Transformative

on the transformative level in a school,
it doesn’t matter how nice a teacher is,
how knowledgeable a teacher is,
how many degrees a teacher has,
it does matter the relationship a teacher has to the subject,
the relationship a teacher has to the student,

I was always buoyed up when a student
found value in a subject, a discipline, they didn’t value before,
when they found a competence within
they didn’t know they had,
I am still saddened by a comment a student made decades ago:
after a year of American history with me,
she announced she had decided
she really didn’t like history after all,

every subject is a door
that can open into wonder and joyous discovery,
or not,
at best a teacher is a gate-keeper
who can open both subject and student to discovery,
to asking a question and pursuing an answer,
it’s all like a “spark bird,”
an intensity of a particular experience
that reorients one’s insides
so that one lives a love of birds,

a stellar student tell me of a favorite high school biology teacher,
describing her with words like “genuine,”
“almost childlike in her enthusiasm,”
“excited,” “passionate,”
a teacher who made the subject understandable,
who found ways to contextualize it all
and fit the subject into the real world,
a teacher who knew the work needed,
who required the work done,
who made sure the work got the extra time it needed,
who enabled the student to find their way forward,
and who was fulfilled when the student swam on their own,

her former student graduated college with honors
and is still excited about subject and his steps forward
after his first year in graduate school,

how wonderful that he knew a high school gatekeeper
who helped him know the way forward,
and how to walk it.

by Henry H. Walker
7/4/24