For me that teacher was Richard "Doc" Neunherz, who I have just learned passed away yesterday.
In a life spent almost entirely within the world of education, I have been very fortunate in my teachers and academic advisers. At every level I have been lucky enough to have at least one person who took an interest in me, encouraged me, and taught me something important about myself that transcended the subject of our inquiry. But for all my good fortune (and comparing notes with some of my colleagues, I am well aware of just how lucky I've been), Doc Neunherz surpassed them all
Before that, although I'd had good teachers, I never knew what it meant to have a teacher change the way I understood the activity of learning. I don't recall exactly how long it took sitting in Doc's class in the Fall of 1990 to realize it, whether it was after the first class or the second (it couldn't have been any later than that) that that it hit me: this man was who I wanted to be when I grew up.
I don't know what it was exactly about him. His teaching was always extremely lively to be sure, frenetic at times (a style I notice has had more than a small impact on my own) -- no matter what the subject of the day's discussion was, he was always immersed in it, pacing back and forth in the middle of the classroom (in those days, our tables were arranged in a square, with an open space in the middle, the front-left hand corner open so that Doc could enter the arena and exit to write a word or concept on the board). He always wore the same thing, which I have since then always regarded as the historian's uniform: collared shirt, messy (sometimes stained) v-neck sweater, sleeves rolled up to the elbow with shirt cuff pealed back over them, pants, sometimes clean (and often not) and scuffed loafers. Chosen, I'd always assumed, simply because they didn't require much thought, they conveyed unconsciously what actually mattered in Doc's classroom: ideas, clearly expressed.
This was no small lesson for a teenager, especially one like me: a poor kid on a full scholarship at a fancy prep school, painfully self-conscious of my appearance and the difference between me and what I imagined were my better-heeled classmates.
I want to say he reminded me of a method actor when he stepped into the classroom, like the best Stanislawski student, he took the part and internalized it, became it -- except in this case it wasn't some imaginary character, but rather the embodiment of all the things I have come to associate with intellectual cultivation. It was sharp, it was challenging, it was tough and tolerated no soft thinking or mushy ideas.
There was no better feeling -- and as I write this, it I feel viscerally once again this flutter of excitement in my chest, nervous and warm -- that I would get when he would throw out a question and I knew the answer. That was one of his tools as he lectured. His lectures would begin with a thesis on the day's topic, and the lecture would build slowly, elaborating and building his case. Every so often, whether to check up on who was awake, or (as I prefer to think), test us on how well we understood where he was going, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, the serious thinkers from those just passing the time until free period. It probably wasn't his motivation, but it's how I thought of it. I don't need to say that I never wanted to, nor to my knowledge did I ever, not make the "cut" that I imagined going on. But, unlike in many of my other subjects, it wasn't fear that motivated me to make sure I was never caught out.
It was a love for the activity of learning history, but even more it was a desire of the deepest sort: to impress this man. He was like that. His approval meant more to me than just about any person I had ever known. Those few times where I felt like I didn't match up, or let him down, weigh as heavily on me to this day more than those of almost anyone else. It's strange to think about that as I write it, but it's true.
In fact, it was when I didn't meet his expectations -- or else what I imagined them to be -- that I came to realize just how important his pedagogy was to me. The most prominent example that comes to mind was at the beginning of the second class I took with Doc -- AP American history. Doc's AP history class was legendary when I was a student. If there was a class in my mind that really was the big leagues, it was that one.
[Of course Doc and his close colleague Mr. Callow (the two of them were this dynamic duo at Charles Wright -- I my mind back then, they were the closest thing we had to a high-level think tank) only added to the mystique that surrounded acceptance into the AP American class -- starting with the fact that one had to be accepted into the class.]
The first assignment was to write an essay based upon the summer's reading, which was itself considerable for a junior in high school -- a historical monograph on the early colonial period (I'm embarrassed to say I don't remember the book). I did the work with as much enthusiasm as I could muster (which, with a full-time summer job and a social life wasn't a huge amount), wrote the paper, and turned it in.
Then I got it back...with a C+. I was distraught. The grade was the lowest grade I'd ever gotten on a paper (before or since). Even worse: it was from Doc. A C+ from God almighty would have been easier to take, if only because I certainly didn't feel quite the pressure to impress God. I couldn't conceive of what had happened.
I did come to understand what Doc was doing -- as he himself explained to me when I stayed after class to have a breakdown. It was a pedagogic exercise; the idea was to grade us as though we were in a college seminar, to drive home the idea that historical writing was a complicated endeavor and required a lot of work and thought to be done well. This was, at least on some level, a way of deflating our own self-estimations, of breaking down bad habits and getting our attention.
Well, I think in my case it worked too well. Already insecure, I was now terrified that, if I couldn't do well in a subject that I thought was far and away my best, terrible consequences would follow. I was afraid foremost that I would lose my scholarship and have to start over, back in public school at Peninsula High. This, you should know, was a terrifying prospect for me. Or, even worse, that I would doom my chances at the one thing I thought I wanted more than anything: getting in to an elite East Coast college.
I was crushed. More than that, I was actually terrified of having to leave Charles Wright, or what this said about the quality of my intellect. Most of all, I felt betrayed. I had made no secret of my admiration for Doc; had been on the knowledge bowl team (his baby while I was there), had asked for him to be my adviser, had met with him again and again. I honestly didn't know what happened.
This, needless to say, was a lot to lay on the poor man. Again in retrospect, he was probably giving me much more credit than I realized: it was a tough grade, but he thought I could handle it and learn the lesson that was to be learned. That I didn't take it that way was, really, my own problem, and he would have been justified in telling me to get a grip and do better next time.
But that's not what he did -- well, not entirely. He did tell me to get a grip -- that I wasn't going to lose my scholarship because of one paper grade (it's hard to believe, but I really did think in those terms...crazy), that this wasn't a reflection on my abilities or talents, or even my potential to excel in his class (and I did do fine in the end).
More importantly, though, was a concept he took special pains to explain to me not just at that meeting but frequently afterwards: perspective. He told me about his own experiences. He told me how he had nearly failed out or Princeton his first year. Even deeper, and probably more painful for him, he told me how hard it had been, after earning a Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington, for him to come to terms with his life as a high school teacher.
Now this was a shocker. To this day it is amazing to me how candid he was with me. I'm quite touched in retrospect. He told me that taking the position at Charles Wright years before was not his ideal choice; that what he wanted, like most who earn a Ph.D. in history, was to go into academia, to write and publish. As I now know only too well, it is -- and was then -- painfully difficult to succeed in academia. For those who actually succeed in landing that tenure-track job, there are so many who, for whatever reason, it doesn't happen for (and I use the passive very pointedly here -- it is far more often the case that the career doesn't happen than that one doesn't make it work).
Up to that point I could not have conceived of Doc not being exactly where he wanted to be. To me, he was at the top of his profession. I felt like he was the smartest man I'd ever met, and I naively couldn't imagine a reality where he didn't simply take whatever job he wished. As I figured it, he must have been at Charles Wright because it was where he wanted to be. As someone who felt like I'd won the lottery every single day I rode through the gates of that beautiful Charles Wright campus, I couldn't imagine otherwise.
No, he told me, it had been difficult for him. But after many years, he had come to realize something important: that things have a way of working out for the best even when you don't expect it. That even though he was at a job that he had once felt was not what he thought he'd be doing, he had found it more rewarding than he ever could have imagined. I know this may seem like a rather banal lesson, but it is hard to overstate how much having someone like Doc Neunherz tell me this. I won't say that it sank in immediately (although I did feel flattered by his candor). But over the years, I come again and again to the conclusion that it was at that moment, along with a handful of other experiences (some of them also involving Doc), that were pivotal in getting me where I am today.
I'm sad to say that after my junior year, the year of AP American history, I drifted away from Doc. The next year, I sat out a new class the he was offering for seniors that I flatter myself to think he had wanted me to take, so that I could join the newly-instituted drama program (hey, it didn't hurt -- I did end up as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof that year). Somehow I felt, while I was a senior, that I had moved on, and in thinking this I made some mistakes in my relationship with Doc that I will always regret, at least a little.
[I have to insert here my momentary insight that it is amazing how little I actually know about what Doc thought about any of these things...I am sure I project a great deal onto the relationship; such is the nature of teenage self-centeredness.]
Well, in any case, now I am living out a career that started back in Doc's classroom. I don't think it is in any way an exaggeration to say that whatever success I have in this work, but even more in my ability to move on when things don't exactly work as planned, is in no small part due to Doc's influence.
I had wanted to send Doc a copy of my book when it comes out, but alas it is not due out until the fall. I had so hoped to send it to him and dreamed that just maybe he'd read it and we could reconnect when he told me what he thought of it.
So as a meager tribute and a thank you to him, I'm putting the dust jacket here -- the first time I've shown it. I can think of no better way to say thank you to Doc than to point out the obvious: that were it not for him and his classroom, I'd never have gotten where I am.
