I taught history, about which I am passionate, but I guess I was always a writing teacher at heart. History was the medium I used to teach thinking, writing, speaking and—here’s where we get a little Wokey, I guess— empathy for the people who populate our past. And, contrary to my generally squishy and gentle reputation, I had some hard edges, I guess. I was never the same after I took twenty students out to see the SLO debut of Master and Commander.

So I could be a jerk when a jerk was needed. I preferred to think of myself as Lucky Jack Aubrey, the creation of novelist Patrick O’Brian, frigate captain, and those thirty-five students were men and women with Hearts of Oak.

This is from AP European History at Arroyo Grande High School, maybe just a few years ago. The music is Boccherini.

This dealt with free-response essays. Our favorites—my English teacher partner and dear friend Amber Derbidge and I—were what are called Document-Based Questions, in which the student is given an hour to weave a series of primary resources, from both history and literature, into a coherent essay that answers the essay prompt. One example is shown below.

I wrote every essay myself, whether free-response or DBQ, before I assigned them to our sophomores.

Our students were sixteen years old. Some of them were fifteen. The rigor we demanded of them paid off, I think; it was such a joy to see the change in them from the beginning of the year to the end. Their maturation was kind of miraculous.

I loved teaching teenagers.