I’ve previously posted about it but it wasn’t until I was about twenty years out of high school (mid 80s grad) that I came to appreciate my flyover public school teachers. There are several people and events that left lasting impacts:
One had been 20 when he liberated a Nazi camp. He brought in a couple dozen black and white 8x10s they used for documentation. His testimony and the photos made it real to us- and he pleaded with us to always remember and be vigilant.
In honors world literature seminar, we had a Russian segment where we read “The Gulag Archipelago” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” It was dreary and difficult and everyone really kind of hated it but our teacher was passionate about it.
Our civics teacher had us watch “The Day After” but also arranged a theater screening of “The Killing Fields” after Dith Pran had an impromptu assembly at our school. Pran had given a talk at a college the previous night. Our teacher met him there and convinced him to come to our class. I think our teacher bought a couple dozen of the books as he offered us extra credit if we read/reported on them as well.
Our American history teacher brought in a Viet Nam veteran to talk about his experience and put some perspective on the fall of Saigon on its ten year anniversary. A couple of years later (when my brother was in her class) she brought in a veteran of ‘the Root’ who talked about the Beirut bombing.
Of course, it wasn’t all great: The band director was a barely functioning alcoholic, a coach was dating a cheerleader, an administrator’s kid smoked a lot of pot, we lost a couple of kids too soon, and the librarian was often sound asleep…