It was just like Dead Poet's Society, but with a lawnmower...

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The other day at work I had one of those worlds colliding moments.  I was having a meeting with a project manager and I saw the name of my old high school English teacher on one of his project plans.

I think we all had that one teacher in high school who was just plain cool.  You know the one, who treated us like the adults we wanted to be instead of the kids we really still were.  For me it was this guy.  I still remember what he said to us on our first day of class, basically that he'd treat us like adults as long as we behaved like them, and that anyone who wasn't interested in being their could leave, he didn't care.

No one left, and everyone turned up to all of the classes.  Of course, that might have had a little bit to do with the fact that at least three quarters of the girls in the class had a crush on the guy, but still.

It turns out that he's now a bit of a rock star in the education field.  Generations of kids who were taught by him, all having gone on to various fields, all willing to step up now and help him with his programs and projects.  Apparently that's what a lifetime in education gets you, an army of well placed minions ready to do your bidding.

And good for him, he totally earned it!  He was definitely one of the best teachers I had in high school, and I'm sure a lot of kids would say he was the one teacher who made a difference in their lives.

But if I'm honest, he wasn't the most influential teacher I had.  That honour goes to someone who wasn't even a teacher.  His name was Big John, at least that's what we kids called him, and he was the gardener at my primary school.  

He had a shed in the main courtyard where he kept all his tools and his workbench, and when he wasn't mowing the grass or trimming bushes, he used to make us kids little presents out of scraps of wooden board and old greeting cards.  I still have some of the little wall hangings he made me, and I'll always treasure them.

I think the reason we all loved him as much as we did is that, in a place full of teachers and administration and other adults who all seemed to just be there to scare us or judge us (at least that's how it seemed to us), he was just so completely accepting of every kid in that place.  We all knew, instinctually, that he was a good person and we were safe while he was around.  He'd let us sit with him while we ate our lunch, or stand around in his work shed (which was really just a carport type affair with a door that they closed up in the evenings) and watch him make things.  We all knew that wherever he was was a safe space.

He understood us, and we all felt it.

I read on a message board a little while ago that he'd passed away, and I can't say I was surprised.  He wasn't young when I was in school, and that was more than 30 years ago.  But the sheer number of comments on that post from people who remembered him overwhelmed me, all of them talking about how much they'd loved him.  

There were a lot of teachers in that school, but I think Big John was perhaps the most influential adult in the place.  We were all lucky to have known him.