All Over the Place: My International Teacher of the Year

By Michael H. Brownstein









For Frank Christenson, deceased 2019

He was the blinding light that never blinded,
the rough edge of emerald within a river polished aquamarine.
How do you teach students from a place you have never been?
Study the methods of Frank, the dynamics in his voice,
his dramatic gestures, his power to engage.
He had a way with the bricks of learning;
he was the clay that created confident, proactive learners.

Can an inner-city classroom perform King Lear from memory, sets and all?

He took his students to that height and then further.
Chekhov, Beckett, Molière, Hansberry.
His drama club was the drama club of his students,
middle schoolers, actors and directors, writers and producers.

We will read one of my favorite books for a few weeks, he said at the beginning of class. We will not study how to take a test. We will not read stories from the basal reader. We will illuminate the curriculum.

He had a core curriculum encompassing mountains and valleys,

rivers and dry stream beds, thunderstorms and the eye of a hurricane.

To Kill a Mockingbird, The Old Man and the Sea, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

and Shakespeare – always Shakespeare.

Then he went to Asia to teach English to the people of Taiwan, China, Viet Nam,

and his students thrived and became scholars,
graduating with honors from the University of California at Berkeley,

the University of Illinois in Chicago and Champaign, Ivy League schools.

When he spoke, his students became kites in the wind of knowledge,
diggers deep in the mines of comprehension,

sunlight and moonlight, the gleam of blue-eyed skies, honey-tailed sunsets,

the dawn and ballet of scholarship.

Did he win awards during his lifetime? Accolades? MacArthur Fellowships?

Teacher of the Year?

This is what I wish for, his students called him to say, I wish for you to come to my graduation in California – Illinois – Massachusetts. I want you as my guest of honor. I will pay for everything. I am here because it was you who made me who I am today.

His student’s accomplishments were all he needed.
Nothing more.
He was best man at my wedding, a great colleague, a best friend,
a bright light never extinguished.

Copyright © 2019 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s latest volume of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else, was published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018.