A Teacher Who Made a Difference

Remember that teacher that made a big difference in your life?

One that unlocked a love of learning?

The one that seemed really excited about what he was teaching, and that enthusiasm rubbed off?

I’ve been blessed to have several of those in my life.

But my all-time favorite teacher died last week in Katy.

Henry Lyle was 86, and I hadn’t talked to him in probably 25 years.

But the memories I have of being in his class are still as vivid as any I have of school.

I had him for one class period a day at La Grange Middle School in a class called LEAP in sixth, seventh and eight grades.

It was a beautifully unstructured class. One six weeks we did nothing but learn about and play chess and then had a class tournament.

We read – out loud as a class – Huckleberry Finn.

He created this Jeopardylike game to teach us about computers and programming.

We did a multi-day mock criminal trial.

We were middle schoolers, but he took us to the high school library to research projects.

He was the sponsor for this academic competition myself and lots of other kids competed in through high school called Future Problem Solving. Thirty-five years ago we were doing deep dives into potential problems related to things like the Internet, Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change. Imagine that.

Mr. Lyle was a smoker and his class was in one of those portable buildings on campus.

He would occasionally leave us to our assignments and sneak out of class to go smoke.

We’d lock him out of the classroom – and raid his candy drawer.

How could he get mad at us without getting in trouble himself?

He bet us that if we could make it to state and place in Future Problem Solving (a program mostly dominated by 5A schools around the state), that he would quit smoking.

We upheld both ends of that bargain.

Even though we stopped having him as our teacher after middle school, our team kept competing in the Future Problem Solving program with Mr. Lyle as our advisor all through high school, making it back to state several times.

But after high school I probably talked to Mr. Lyle only a handful of times. He did write me a really great letter after I got my first job at a newspaper. A couple of years ago I tried to track him down. Got in touch with his daughter on social media and she promised to pass along my message of appreciation to him.

I got the sense that he wasn’t doing very well, healthwise, even then.

But gosh, I’m so glad I had him as a teacher, and wish I could have told him so one more time. So that’s my advice to you today – reach out to those special teachers in your life and thank them.

And now I’ll take my own advice: Mrs. Keith, Mrs. Jenkins, Ms. Demerson, Mrs. Brauner, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Hoelscher, Mrs. Oppermann, Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Baker, Mrs. Pechal, Mrs. Voss, Mrs. Hall, Coach Halamicek, Mrs. Mueller, Mrs. Keilers, Mrs. Stoever, Mr. Mattijetz, Mr and Mrs. Chovanec, Mr. and Mrs. Lowes, Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Kutac, Mrs, Hughett, Mrs. Eaves, Mr. and Mrs. Wagner, Mrs. Anderle, Mrs. Hayes, Mrs. Joost, Mr. and Mrs. Calley, Mrs. Teinert, Mr. Moellenberndt, Mrs. Kulhanek, Mrs. Pietsch, Mrs. Hartmann, Coach Cooper, Coach Johnson, Coach Vincent, Coach Hickle, Coach Schmidt, Mrs. Wenske, Mr. Toensing, Mrs. Oeding, Mrs. Dippel, Mrs. Wessels, Mrs. Cooper, Mrs. Lyle, Mrs. Von Minden – whether you are still here or are in that great teacher’s lounge in the sky – thank you for being my teacher.

I genuinely remember being in each and every one of your classrooms. I can remember, the sights and sounds of the places you made a home for my classmates and I every day.

For today’s teachers out there feeling beaten down by state regulations or standardized testing requirements or any of the dozens of other things that siphon away your attention from actually teaching, please remember the impact you are having on so many kids – even if they wait way too long to tell you.