He busily arranges the mangled papers before him as I exhale nervously and glance at the wrinkled sheet in my hands. I excitedly await an opportunity to ask him the questions scrawled upon that sheet, for I can’t even imagine his impending answers. Even the simplest and most basic inquiries are quick to yield laugh-inducing responses from the tall, bearded English teacher.
The interview commences, and the charismatic Mr. Myers wastes no time in demonstrating his engaging teaching style and uniquely brilliant sense of humor; spitting subtle jokes like sunflower seeds with a cool calmness yet unusual energy.
Speaking with him feels more like talking to a comedian than the teacher with whom I’ve learned such a great deal over the past school year. This rare blend of humor and instructional talent is a gold nugget in today’s education system, and since 1997, room B332 has been a gold mine.
Raised in Kingston, MA, Mr. Myers attended high school in Southborough at St. Mark’s. Upon graduation, he attended Bates College, where he received divine inspiration to pursue a career in teaching. To be fair, divine inspiration may be a generous term.
When asked what led him to teaching, he simply replied, “Because I majored in Philosophy. You can’t do anything when you major in Philosophy,” he laughs, “You can either become a lawyer or a teacher, and I wasn’t going to be a lawyer.”
With a clear understanding behind his motivation for teaching, one question still lingers: why English? Mr. Myers explains that he teaches English primarily because it’s “cool,” and because it allows him the greatest freedom to mess with his students, one of his favorite aspects of the teaching profession.
For, as he so emphatically stated, “[the students] are my prisoners, and I am the jerk prison guard.” He also expresses his acute pleasure with his ability to distribute quizzes and subsequent misery whenever he so desires.
Yet again, injecting humor into situations where one considers himself least likely to find it. With this, Mr. Myers has built a challenging and entertaining class environment where students learn but are too busy laughing to know it.
As the interview digresses into the harvesting of personal information, such as common interests and hobbies, his comical charm failed to cease. Mr. Myers states that if he had his way, he would be hiking at all times. This compelling interest quickly fades into Myers’s calm depiction of his passion for origami, paragliding, and model trains.
I laugh heartily, but his silent, straight face drives me to record his every word. He then tells me about his three boys; an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, and a three-year-old. It is here where I see a different Mr. Myers: a Mr. Myers who is beyond the wit and loud chuckle and beyond the beard and commonly-alluded-to height.
He reclines back in his chair, looking downwards at that mangled pile of papers, and laughs forcefully, while uttering, “I suppose the only interests I’m allowed to have are my children.” He pauses while he leans forward, his laugh dissipates, and his voice falls low, and transforms into something different, something real, “I say ‘allowed’, but they’re the only interests I would want to have.”
This unusually serious Mr. Myers startles me. I realize that even a jerk prison guard like Mr. Myers, Westborough High’s charismatic English teacher, takes off his badge every now and then.
