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Jan. 24th, 2021 09:37 pmOkay, I promise my next post will be less serious, but my high school did this remembrance over zoom yesterday for Dr. K, my high school physics teacher, and I wanted to talk about it a little. I'm really glad I went to it.
Dr. K was an institution. All the students who went through my high school from its inception (in the 80's) to his retirement in 2013 knew who he was, regardless of whether they had had him as a teacher or not. There were collections of things he'd said (KQuotes) that circulated around the school intranet. Of those who had him as a teacher, some people disliked him, some feared him, more loved him, and even more than that were inspired by him; and even the ones who disliked him usually ended up learning something about physics and about physics pedagogy, at least. He was extremely quick-witted, often sarcastic, and he pushed his students as hard as he thought they could take, which worked really well for some of us (and, to be fair, occasionally less well). But he also cared extremely deeply about all his students, and could be patient and gentle with the students who needed that (though he was always impatient with students who could do better and didn't). He was one of the best teachers I ever had, and definitely by far the best physics teacher I ever had, and as I've said before, everything I know about physics pedagogy I learned from him. And he was also famous for pushing students to gain broader "basic cultural literacy, people!" and known for things like pushing students to be more adventurous with food/restaurant choice (K and I sampled all kinds of different restaurants in college in large part because of this). I loved him a lot.
One thing I'd totally forgotten and which yesterday reminded me of was the physical sense of him -- I was able to hear in my head, more than twenty-five years later, exactly what he sounded like; when people told stories about him I think all of us mentally heard him saying the dialogue in the stories in his dry, quick, sarcastic voice. He had this absolutely terrible combover that we students speculated was a single strand of hair wrapped many times around his head, and he had a way of fluttering his eyes when he thought you'd said something absolutely idiotic but he was going to be nice and try not to tell you how idiotic you were, the former of which I'd forgotten until seeing the pictures of him (when the news of his death came out) and the latter of which I'd forgotten until yesterday. (Hilariously, the person who brought this up was one of his fellow teachers, who said, "All those things he did to you students? He did to the other teachers too.") And he had a way of smiling when you got a deadpan joke he was making -- this totally makes me smile as I remember it. I don't think there's any other teacher I remember with such vivid immediacy as him, except maybe my senior English teacher (another contender for Best Teacher I Ever Had), and with Dr. M I remember his voice the most. (Though I spent much less time with Dr. M than I did with Dr. K, so there's that. And also he did not have a hilarious combover to remember.)
It was incredibly nice to be with a bunch of other people who remembered him and what an amazing teacher and character he was, and whose lives were also different and changed because of him. It wasn't a sad event really (I think we had all done our grieving last year anyway), it really was a celebration of his life and how amazing a teacher he was and how glad we all were that he was in our life, and it was if anything a happy thing for me to attend. And it was also, a bit hilariously, sort of a massive reunion for a bunch of awesome physics-math-technical nerds from my high school, many of whom I hadn't seen in years and years, which was really cool.
(But now I have a lot of feelings :) )
Dr. K was an institution. All the students who went through my high school from its inception (in the 80's) to his retirement in 2013 knew who he was, regardless of whether they had had him as a teacher or not. There were collections of things he'd said (KQuotes) that circulated around the school intranet. Of those who had him as a teacher, some people disliked him, some feared him, more loved him, and even more than that were inspired by him; and even the ones who disliked him usually ended up learning something about physics and about physics pedagogy, at least. He was extremely quick-witted, often sarcastic, and he pushed his students as hard as he thought they could take, which worked really well for some of us (and, to be fair, occasionally less well). But he also cared extremely deeply about all his students, and could be patient and gentle with the students who needed that (though he was always impatient with students who could do better and didn't). He was one of the best teachers I ever had, and definitely by far the best physics teacher I ever had, and as I've said before, everything I know about physics pedagogy I learned from him. And he was also famous for pushing students to gain broader "basic cultural literacy, people!" and known for things like pushing students to be more adventurous with food/restaurant choice (K and I sampled all kinds of different restaurants in college in large part because of this). I loved him a lot.
One thing I'd totally forgotten and which yesterday reminded me of was the physical sense of him -- I was able to hear in my head, more than twenty-five years later, exactly what he sounded like; when people told stories about him I think all of us mentally heard him saying the dialogue in the stories in his dry, quick, sarcastic voice. He had this absolutely terrible combover that we students speculated was a single strand of hair wrapped many times around his head, and he had a way of fluttering his eyes when he thought you'd said something absolutely idiotic but he was going to be nice and try not to tell you how idiotic you were, the former of which I'd forgotten until seeing the pictures of him (when the news of his death came out) and the latter of which I'd forgotten until yesterday. (Hilariously, the person who brought this up was one of his fellow teachers, who said, "All those things he did to you students? He did to the other teachers too.") And he had a way of smiling when you got a deadpan joke he was making -- this totally makes me smile as I remember it. I don't think there's any other teacher I remember with such vivid immediacy as him, except maybe my senior English teacher (another contender for Best Teacher I Ever Had), and with Dr. M I remember his voice the most. (Though I spent much less time with Dr. M than I did with Dr. K, so there's that. And also he did not have a hilarious combover to remember.)
It was incredibly nice to be with a bunch of other people who remembered him and what an amazing teacher and character he was, and whose lives were also different and changed because of him. It wasn't a sad event really (I think we had all done our grieving last year anyway), it really was a celebration of his life and how amazing a teacher he was and how glad we all were that he was in our life, and it was if anything a happy thing for me to attend. And it was also, a bit hilariously, sort of a massive reunion for a bunch of awesome physics-math-technical nerds from my high school, many of whom I hadn't seen in years and years, which was really cool.
(But now I have a lot of feelings :) )
