Last weekend I met up with a former student of mine. He graduated high school in 2007, so it had been a good 20 years since we'd seen each other. He was visiting a sister in Portland and looked me up. We met for coffee.
David was always one of my most memorable students. He was in a Jr. Honors English class with me and then took my Intro Psychology class too. Aside from being highly motivated, and intellectually curious, David was a good athlete and quite a good looking young man. His father is Jewish and his mother is Japanese, so he has that striking quality that bi-racial kids often do. It occurred to me once that I had his mother as a student in my first year of teaching back in 1973.
We spoke of many things, especially world affairs. David does geo-political analysis for a tech company, reflective of his educational background which includes degrees from UC Berkeley and Georgetown. The conversation was heady, but easy. All the while, David's calm demeanor and thoughtful smiles accompanied his thoughtful intelligence.
I hope when he is back in town some day we can get together again. I enjoyed exchanging ideas, hearing about his life as well as the lives of classmates he's kept in touch with. When I have the opportunity to meet with former students and see how they have fared decades later, it's extremely satisfying. It lays to rest all the criticisms and false perceptions that people often have of our system of education. It's too complicated to make any generalization stating how good or bad American students turned out. I know otherwise.
When I got up to leave, I said, "David, you can call me Bruce now, you don't have to say Mr. Greene."
He smiled, and replied, "Well, I don't know, you'll always be my teacher."
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