My friend Natalie took this picture in 2009. At the time, she was a high school senior working on a final project in a Dramatic Literature class. I was a high school teacher. We were in the Media Center so students like Natalie could work on their final projects.
I appear to be taking attendance on a large, blocky computer. I appear to be drinking coffee from my thermos. I appear to be leering at Natalie’s camera with the intensity of a thousand winds. All of these things fit with my memory of being a high school teacher in 2009.
I burst out laughing when Natalie sent me this picture. I hope you burst out laughing when you looked at the picture too.
The man in the picture is so wild.
***
I am writing about my relationship with Natalie in a book with my friend Erin. I wrote to Natalie and asked her what she remembered about having me as a high school teacher. She sent me this picture. I laughed out loud.
My book with my friend Erin is an attempt to live out the conceptual framework we’ve been working on for years about vital teaching and learning. About vital living. Our book has led us to revisit moments from our careers in education. To travel through time. To speak with ghosts. I am proud of what this book is becoming. I’m not proud because I think it will sell a million copies. I don’t think it will change the world. I don’t even know if people will read it. Still, I am proud of what we are making because I think Erin and I building something that feels alive. What will happen to the life we are leaning into? I have no idea. Richard Wright wrote at the end of Black Boy that he would hurl words into the darkness and hope for an echo.
It seems right to me to hurl words into this darkness. I think, in 2009, that wild man in the picture above is hurling words into the darkness with his teaching. I think Natalie, like so many other students, offers an echo.
What else can we hope for?
***
Natalie was my student in 2009. Now it is 2025, and Natalie is one of my closest friends. Many of my closest friends in 2025 were once students. I don’t know why that happened. Creating light in the darkness brings people together, I suppose, and that togetherness keeps mattering.
Natalie was a research assistant for me during my dissertation. She was a student at the University of Minnesota at the time. Learning to become a teacher. And then Natalie was there when my son Solomon was born. And she visited us every year when we lived in Pennsylvania. Natalie continues to visit now that we lived in Iowa City. She is as much a part of my family as anyone else.
Here is a picture of the onesie that Natalie gave Solomon when he was born. It is as beautiful to me as the picture of that wild man above. A wonderful echo that just keeps echoing.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 