Thomas O’Shaughnessy, my high-school English II teacher, died on Thursday, after two years of fighting colon cancer. I heard it through our high school’s Facebook page, which shows that social networks still serve some of their core purposes: to inform and to stay connected, rather than become detached and caught up in farming games and Bananagrams. Admittedly, it’s a bit strange to start journaling my life with this event, but for some reason it felt fitting in a Circle of Life sort of way: it is around the time of his death that my life as an educator is about to begin.

I graduated from uni past May, but even with the commencement and the celebrations, it still hadn’t felt real. Perhaps it was due to not having my diploma or transcripts (they were available for pick-up a few months later), or the fact that I hadn’t landed a teaching job. Granted, I only sought out one school (I didn’t make it past the first interview) and I just dropped off resumes in random boxes at one education fair.

With no job prospects, this summer felt like all the other ones during my undergraduate years, a sort of limbo in which my mind was free to mindlessly rot. Sleeping through the day, staying through the night, going out and playing games, this summer has been a very blissful, if unexamined, life. I kept a part-time tutoring position at my university, mostly to have money to pay off student loan interests, credit card bills, and for summer outings. Oh, and to still feel like I’m pursuing an educator’s path. Yeah…

But it’s now the end of July and there’s slightly more pressure for me to find a job. My tutoring gig ends after August 4th, and those bills are still coming. Plus, thing are financially tight in my family, and I’d like to help relieve some of my mother’s stress. So I’ve begun an earnest search for a teaching position, searching the classifieds and the various hiring portals. And as I’ve begun applying, those resumes I sent off months ago are finally catching some people’s attentions. I received two calls for job interviews, with one interview coming this Monday.

With a potential job so close in my grasp, the news of Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s death has been very affecting. Although I wasn’t particularly close to him–I don’t think I ever had any deep “personal” connections with my teachers–I still had this urge to reflect on what his passing means to me. I only had him for one class, and that was way back in freshman year, more than eight years ago! But there are things about him I remember clearly:

He had this way of gesturing that was so elegant, as if he were sliding knowledge from them and into our minds. He also had this low, sly chuckle whenever he began talking about something juicy, like the devilish Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar or the ironic moments in Fahrenheit 451. And, of course, there was his trademark phrase: “And so on and so forth.” I don’t think anyone else could use it so smoothly as he could, allowing his words to linger and waft, a gentle reminder that there are no definites in the discourse of learning.

He was also a traditionalist as far as teaching philosophies went, relying more on his experience and focusing on core skills than keeping up with the latest methodologies. There was nothing wrong with his approach, as he possessed all the qualities of a top-notch educator, combining his amazing content knowledge with effective pedagogy. It also helped that our high school pooled some of the best and brightest in the city.

He had regular vocabulary exams quizzing our familiarity with parts of speech, definitions, and the various -onyms, using words from the NY Times or some literary essay from a magazine. Many of those words have become part of my everyday vocabulary, not only due to the energy I spent memorising them, but also because he had so carefully underlined the dozen or so words that they held some air of importance. Even now, I still have those articles carefully filed away, reading them once in a while to enjoy the myriad topics he presented to our young, arrogant minds, and to plan how I would use these resources in a classroom.

I also remember having to memorise soliloquies, song lyrics, and poems to recite in front of the class. I was a poor public speaker, and even now I’m somewhat reserved when it comes to standing in the spotlight (an incongruous trait for a teacher, I know). Once, when it was my turn to speak, I flubbed my lines so bad I just stopped half-way and resigned myself to a failing grade. Instead, Mr. O’Shaughnessy just casually told me to try again the next day, and went on with the class as usual. I was so grateful for being given a clean slate that I spent the night memorising an even harder poem, Charlotte Bronte’s “Evening Solace,” and recited it flawlessly the next day. Mr. O’Shaughnessy had a face of surprise and amusement, and hearing his rumbling chuckle after telling me “Good job” gave me so much comfort that I didn’t even care about the grade. And, if I dare suggest, I don’t think he did either. That exercise was more than just a memory test or a letter to put in his book; it was a lesson in passion and commitment, in failing and trying again, a lesson in the true spirit of learning.

Memorisation is no longer “in” if you read most contemporary education methods. I think it’s a shame. Kids today may rejoice in avoiding such a strenuous task, but they also miss out in forging connections with literature, bonds made only in a crucible of repeated attempts and failures, where these stories and words carve themselves into us. I may no longer be able to fully recite Bronte’s poem, but I can fall in love with every time I read any of those lines, where its woes but live in reverie.

And so, as my interview is set tomorrow, and as I prepare my responses to the usual interview questions, I pause to wonder what sort of teacher I want to be. I would give anything to be like O’Shaughnessy, or Delo, or Gibney, or Solberg, or any of the teachers that have made a real change in my life. O’Shaughnessy’s passing also cements my belief that I made the right career choice, that I’m picking up the baton he has passed. In the midst of all the debates about the value of teachers in our present society, I want to continue that tradition of excellence, of inspiring a love for language and learning, of meaningful experiences that are treasured years after, and so on and so forth…