I had a teacher once, who I think was the coolest person I'd ever met.

Imagine this: Year 10 and thrown into a physics class as a get to know science rotation between the big 3 (Chem, Bio and Physics). Physics. Like I had even the slightest interest in that. You’re seriously going to make me do more maths? Eugh; No thanks. Slumped at my desk, waiting for this teacher to walk in, thinking about what I was going to eat for lunch at the end of the period and already considering the excuse for my homework not to be done of whatever class I had in period 1.

Then, the Doc walked in.

Dr. B was in his early 70s. He had been working at my school for the past 20 years, but if you hadn’t made it into the senior year levels, he’d be a ghost; a familiar stranger who you would see walk the corridors on the way to the staffroom, presumably for respite from the hustle of schoolyard. But he didn’t teach Junior students and was mostly was ignored by the younger students. He was dressed in quite conservative attire, dark tailored pants and a neat navy button up shirt. This was standard of the staff at school, but this wasn’t what drew my gaze. What immediately caught my eye was the remnants of an ear piercing, and by the look of it, he’d had a spacer (or one of those new generation ideas of putting big holes in your earlobes- sorry not my area of expertise!).

Wow. What did this all mean? Was this ‘Doctor’ some sort of skateboarding prodigy in his youth? Did he parachute from planes, or jump out of helicopters to ski in fresh powder in his free time? So many questions… but immediately I wanted to know more.

He then began to tell us about his life. His interests included long distance running and orienteering (he’d run over 20 marathons), he had worked in laboratories all over the world and dealt with companies working in the nuclear science area after studying in a fancy overseas institution.

For the next four months, Dr. B taught me the concept of inertia, how even the smoothest of surfaces created friction and how gravity made an apple fall off a tree. My mind was exploding with fun little facts from the world of physics, and I would sit, lesson after lesson, hanging off his every word. I don’t necessarily think I was in awe of Physics, but I felt inspired. The passion he bought into the classroom, his knack of making complex sciences seem alarmingly straight forward and his uncanny ability to crack a joke at exactly the right time in a class to break tension kept twenty year 10 students hanging off his every word.

This was something I bought into my world of teaching. Having come from a corporate background, specifically working in the motor sport industry, I share my previous experiences with students; explore where the world had taken me and life outside of the school boundaries. For me, it was my way of creating connection and breaking down barriers with students. I needed them to trust me in order to learn successfully.

Fast forward a few years, and I’m sitting here writing this article, still being able to word for word recount my first lesson of physics and I wonder if my students will ever think of me again. I certainly wouldn’t expect Dr. B to remember me, but if I walked past him in the street; I’d certainly hope I would pluck up the courage to tell him that he’s the reason I’m now an educator.

I think he deserves to know that.

Jack Lynch

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