On the first day of class, I walked in, and I thought, "This looks like the class where I can get my afternoon nap. A boring world history class, with a teacher who looks like he doesn't have a clue what he's doing. This should be a breeze." That was the last time I compared Mr. Kent's class to anything boring.
Mr. Kent was my high school history teacher for three years. And even though I never liked history, he found a way to make it appeal to me. The walls in his classroom were covered in front-page newspaper articles, seventies band posters, Marilyn Monroe pictures, and the words to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."
It was an interesting room to be in, but Mr. Kent's lectures were more interesting. He would always start by asking the students how their lives were. When a teacher shows interest in what a student has to say, it makes the student more interested in what the teacher has to say. His class was a lecture period, but everyone always listened. He had the kind of presence that could keep our attention even though we hated the topic. He made every lesson come alive. More importantly, Mr. Kent provided us with several different perspectives on one event. We learned an explorer's point of view, as well as the indigenous people encountering the explorer.
Of course, we would get off topic, but we still learned about history. We learned about Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix, the proper way to wax a surfboard, and how to get back into the United States form Mexico. He showed us he knew what it was like to be a teenager, and in our place. That meant more to me than Napolean or the Aswan Dam.
-- Saffron Brown, Florida Atlantic University