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My 11th
grade daughter frequently reminds us that she loves every single one of her
teachers this year. It’s wonderful to
know your child is inspired, loved, and motivated by her teachers. In turn, she has genuine interest in who they
are as people and thinkers. I, like her,
felt that extraordinary connection with my teachers at Coronado High School,
and the idea that I could be part of the kind of relationships these giants in
my life inspired is why I am an educator today.
Sandy Ferguson, or “Ferg,” or "Fergie," and yes, we once dedicated the song "Fergalicious" to him at a Homecoming
dance late in his career, was my teacher in 9th and 10th
grade history and then for half of my classes in 12th grade (for
history, ASB, and then, well, I signed up to be his TA too). I spent half of my school days my senior year
with this man who was kind of like my dad at school. I admired his humor, his expressive eyebrows,
his handwriting, his VW bus, the tee shirts whose life he stretched past viable structural integrity, and that he ran on the beach. In turn, I felt
smart, funny, capable, challenged, talented, understood, and real around and
because of him.
Sandy
Ferguson met each person he encountered, adult and child, with humanity
first—not with authority, not with superiority, despite his intellectual
prowess and vast funds of knowledge. Instead, it was as if he set out to
demonstrate that taking mutual respect for granted actually made it
happen. He treated us like adults but
understood that it was in our adolescent nature to test boundaries. He figured
we’d learn from navigating them in the context of safe and trusting
relationships with adults. He gave us independence and freedom as both students
and leaders of our peers, saying yes more often than no, but challenging us to
figure out if we got it right. A master of mischief himself, he tolerated our
incessant pranking (we turned his posters upside down, moved classroom furniture
to his office or the hallway--capers made possible by his often late arrival to class).
He was
also the teacher who called my parents in spring of senior year when I’d been
accepted to college and was blowing off notes and assignments (after giving me
fair warning). His manner of intervention was inspiring you to reflect on your
own behavior, as if your choices and their consequences were a discussion you
needed most to have with yourself. He taught us about geographical features
like drumlins and all the rivers of South America, and then pushed us to think
critically about history and politics and brought back former students to talk
passionately about what they were learning in college.
Because
I came back to Coronado to teach, I had the privilege to be not only Sandy’s
student, but his colleague, and then his administrator, both supporting and
feeling daily gratitude for his devotion to CHS and district athletics and
facilities. You can imagine how poignant
it was when, after Sandy retired and Alzheimer's was affecting his acuity, he
would stop by CHS from time to time and implore me to put him to work in any
capacity. I need to be here, he’d plead,
I need to work with you all. And we made plans for him to come back and help, but it would
be weeks or months before he returned.
And perhaps he might have regretted that it seemed too late for him. And
though his illness robbed our brilliant friend of many productive years, what
I’d really like to say to Ferg is, you achieved it all in the time you had with us, and
you, my mentor, also achieved Ralph Waldo Emerson’s definition of success: "To laugh
often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of
children; to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether
by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know
even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have
succeeded."
Thank
you, Sandy Ferguson.
