Mr. Haines told me I could even protest for the voting rights of hedgehogs

BY EILEEN BRADY
THE NEWS JOURNAL OF WILMINGTON, OHIO ​

Just as good books keep you up all night and good movies keep you from checking your watch, good teachers keep you from wishing that the bell would ring and deliver you to your next class.
All three entertain as well as inform.
“But teachers shouldn’t have to entertain,” I’ve been told, often by boring teachers.
I disagree with them. If you don’t relish standing before a roomful of teenagers, holding their attention, what are you doing in a profession that essentially requires an audience?
Often, adults mistakenly believe that kids equate easy teachers with good teachers. That doesn’t give most students enough credit. We’ve all had teachers who didn’t require much of us, whose tests were easy regurgitation of notes taken the previous day. But we knew we were getting slighted.
I’ve worked with teenagers enough to know that although they sometimes listen politely, they may only actually hear one thing you tell them.​

To them, if you’re over 18, you may as well be 80, so anything that comes out of your mouth makes you sound like a doddering old granny with white hair, warbling, “When I was your age, young man …” 
You just have to hope that the one thing they take from you helps them become conscientious adults. 
I’ve worked with teenagers thoughtful enough to let me know that I’ve had that impact. And although I didn’t serve as their official teacher, I can tell you that a young person who remembers and uses your guidance — and then lets you know about it — must be the annual gift that supplements teachers’ paltry salaries enough to keep them teaching. 
So when I read something around this time last year about Steven Haines being honored at a University of Cincinnati commencement after being nominated by Holly Holmes of Martinsville, I was thrilled that he had at least one thoughtful student who remembered to thank him for being a great teacher.
Because Mr. Haines is a great teacher. He is one of those rare teachers who understands that students don’t need to be talked down to. That teenagers are actually smarter than they look. That a sense of humor can make any subject seem worth learning.
Mr. Haines is out of the classroom this semester to have surgery, and I know his students are going to miss him tremendously.
Even through a lens clouded by 25 years, I can still picture Mr. Haines sitting pretzel-style on top of the counter in the science room, even though he wasn’t a science teacher, and playing tunes from a new musical, “Cats,” which had just opened the previous year in London. He played “Memory.” He played “The Rum Tum Tugger.” 
We actually listened. 
And then, because he wasn’t afraid to use contemporary work instead of relying on dusty textbooks, we forever had a frame of reference for what would become, at one point, Broadway’s longest-running musical. 
So we remembered.
Mr. Haines didn’t think that our questions were stupid. He didn’t think we were all trying to pull one over on him. He didn’t treat popular kids better than others. He understood that sometimes veering off subject leads to lessons that stick longer.
It must’ve been during one of those times that I asked him about some horrible injustice I’d been handed by the junior high administration. I’m guessing it probably had something to do with stinky bathrooms or smelly cafeteria food.  I truly wish I could remember what had riled me up, although sometimes it doesn’t take much.
Mr. Haines suggested — horror of public-school horrors — that I protest. Can you believe his gall, suggesting dissent in a junior high? Encouraging critical thinking? 
I was not so much shocked as I was suspicious. What good would one junior-high student do by protesting a wrongdoing? 
But I had missed his point. Mr. Haines knew that there was strength in numbers, and that by standing up against the tide, we could find supporters and create change.
That was when he told me the one thing that I took with me from all he taught me in his classroom. He said, “Eileen, it doesn’t matter if you’re marching for the voting rights of hedgehogs, there will be someone else out there who will march with you.”
You gotta admit, that visual of the hedgehogs was ingenious.
So I listened. I remembered. And I have since gone on to protest.