The Teunis Experience

Changed Lives

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Subtle, eloquent, shy. He was a master of words. Words are all that remain with which to honor the all to short life of William Teunis, a man who quietly changed the lives of hundreds of his students.  On this, the fiftieth anniversary of his drowning, I remember my remarkable  teacher  (really, a professor), with fondness, gratitude, and still with a bit of surprise. This endeavor is perhaps, the hardest of all of my writing assignments – one for which I volunteered. I believe that it would be the height of ingratitude not to share his contribution to our lives’ successes. It was his influence that gave me the love and confidence to write, hence this blog.

William Teunis was the chair of the English Department of John F. Kennedy High School in Montgomery County, Maryland. He was Harvard educated (BA and MA and MFA from the University of Iowa). He was a Shakespeare scholar. He was creative and demanding. How did we get so lucky? Why did he give a wit about kids when he could have been producing and staging Shakespeare plays?

Our education at John F. Kennedy High School (Kennedy) was extraordinary. The school opened in 1964 as an “experimental “school. There were no bells, no dress codes, no hall passes, and no honor roll. Students  chose their classes each trimester and then decided whether to be graded, to pass/fail, or to audit the courses. Class attendance was optional; independent study was encouraged. The campus was “open.” We went  out for breakfast or lunch. There were several smoking lounges. As in many Shakespeare plays, going into the woods to discover, contemplate, or play was standard procedure.

Many outsiders considered Kennedy a free-for-all. Yet, much learning took place and we turned out remarkably well. There, a young (not that we thought teachers could be young) English teacher, William Teunis, believed in pressing the limits and did not shy from controversy. He staged a Shakespeare play every autumn. The play of my sophomore year was As You Like It. It was his fourth such production, following, Hamlet, Richard III, and King Lear. I was  astonished by its professionalism. While he officially taught 11^th and 12^th grade English and creative writing, I found myself in his class.

My schooling had been rigorous and traditional. I attended Kennedy under protest. My parents moved. Kennedy became my new school. My boyfriend, friends, horses, and everything I loved were left behind.

Although bright, I had limited motivation. My goal was to get out and get back to my friends. I completed assignments with minimal care and in minimum time. THEN, Mr. Teunis happened. Being somewhat “preppy,” I feared being censured by the liberal leanings of the Kennedy establishment.  I was wrong.  In Teunis’ class it was minimalism that was unacceptable. His passion for the English language and literature was contagious. He ignited our curiosity changing our lives forever.

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On our first day of  class studying Shakespeare’s As you Like It, we read roles around the class. Somewhere in the midst of an Act, he stopped. He clued us in to the fact that Shakespeare wrote plays. He wrote plays that would be performed within two to four hours. His audience was torn between attending public hangings, bear baiting, cockfighting, or watching a play. To survive, Shakespeare had to be  competitive.  He further pointed out that many in the audience were illiterate;  while they knew oral histories and mythology, few delved deeply into the plays. There were no Shakespearean scholars then. Teunis tore the curtain from the mystery of Shakespeare and made us see that the plays were created (not written in books to be read) as entertainment, subject to political correctness and scrutiny of the time.  There we were, in awe and relieved. Suddenly, Shakespeare became attainable. He shared that it was not rocket science and that one of the most enjoyable aspects of the Bard was the rhythm and energy of the language. He explained that every play contained multiple layers and levels and that at every reading or performance, there would be more revelations and more meanings.

During the 13 weeks that followed, we read plays, poems, and stories. We wrote complex assignments in iambic pentameter, we wrote sonnets, and we wrote plays. Overnight we would write an act of a play. We developed characters, wrote dialogue, and wrote summaries. Many of my topics dealt with loss and  personal protest.

Protest. Kennedy students were proficient protesters. They protested the  Vietnam War and the demise of the earth. The first Earth Day was observed that year.  I had my own protest and wanted to simply finish my  assignments and get on with my life. Mr. Teunis diplomatically returned my graded papers with instructions to “rewrite” a better product.

William Teunis respected his students. His low but bold voice urged us to question and reach for more. He gave examples of quality work.  One student’s writing  stood out. He often read her papers aloud as examples of a “well written paper.” Finally, I heard him,  “Oh . . . that’s what he wants!” I thought. My competitiveness emerged, “I can do that.” Minimalism vanished; curiosity and determination took its place. My  papers came back with A’s on first draft.

Reflecting upon the experience, I regret wasting his time with my marginal drivel. His kindness and patience remain  constant reminders to be better. I am immensely grateful for every minute that I spent in his presence and for the world that he opened to our class and to me. Mr. Teunis changed my life. Fifty years later, I still ask myself while I write, “What will Mr. Teunis think?” then, I take more time and care.

At the age of 34, he was the English Department Chair. He built an English program unrivaled by any educational system that I have experienced either as a student or a parent. He challenged us to read, interpret, comprehend, and emulate literature uncommon for high schools. He challenged us with  among others, T.S. Eliot, Hemingway, Poe, Beckett, Albee, and much Shakespeare. By my  second trimester, I eagerly anticipated his class and wrote assignments from the heart; taking extra care. Our compelling discussions delved  into the phycological, the Freudian, the personal, and the historical or contemporary. One classmate said, “He encouraged us to go beyond the story.”

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One day, we found that our classroom was dark. There was lit candle on a small table beside his chair. Suddenly, Mr. Teunis appeared, wearing a dark cape and began reading Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” So began our spring trimester. Our topics ranged from the journalistic approach of Hemingway, to the disillusionment of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,”  to the tales of Poe, to the absurdity of Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And Beckett’s Waiting for Gadot. I was spellbound. I remember writing and loving every moment. Every assignment was life-changing. Today, I cannot walk past the Café de Flore or Les Deux Magot on the left bank of the Seine without remembering Mr. Teunis’ stories of  the heated conversations between Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and other ex-pats of the time, over demitasse coffee.

The “Teunis Experience” has never left many of us. Regardless of the years, Teunis’ students remain grateful and devoted to his impact on their lives. While not all of us went on to study English, literature, or theater, the pull has remained strong to write everything carefully and clearly. Many, following successful careers elsewhere, are returning to their first love of writing, acting, and teaching. One student summarized it elegantly, “The Teunis-echoes became unbearably loud.  Playwriting beckoned me.” Another, returned to community theater after fifty years.

The far-reaching experience has literally circumnavigated the globe. Former student, Richard Isenberg, took Shakespeare to Mongolia and taught 11-year-olds to perform Romeo and Juliet. In his article published in the January 2008 PHI DELTA KAPPAN Richard wrote, “My school experience was saved pretty much at the last minute, in large part because of a little bit of attention and encouragement that came my way from Mr. Teunis. Had it not been for that, I doubt that I would have mustered the confidence to continue my academic life. A few years later, when I entered upon my own teaching career, I was heavily in his debt.’

‘Mr. Teunis could never have imagined that one of the seeds he planted would bring his beloved Shakespeare to a stage in Inner Mongolia. We all have much to give and much to pay back. And we are all the richer for such a world of wonderfully improbable possibilities.’”

Attorney, Jeff Gorsky, who acted in the Teunis production, Richard III and in A Midsummer Night’s Dream later,in college, writes, “My favorite teacher. I took every class I could with him. Teunis was one of the best teachers of my life, maybe the most influential. Aside from the works he introduced me to—Shakespeare, T.S. Elliot, the essays of Orwell—he passed to me two ideas that shaped my intellectual development. The first was the idea of the canon, a core body of works that every educated person should know. He passed around a multipage mimeographed bibliography of the core works of American literature, and while I haven’t read everything on this list I used it heavily to shape my self-education in American literature. The other idea was the highbrow/middlebrow/lowbrow division, something he probably picked up from the writer Dwight MacDonald. The idea is that middlebrow—much of what used to be in the “Book of the Month Club” tends to be blandly conventional, while lowbrow pulp fiction has an imaginative power that can have important literary qualities as the highbrow. Like Feste, Teunis could sing both high and low. One of the books he assigned was Montana Rides, by Evans Evans, a pen name of Frederick Faust, who was best known as Max Brand. He was open to sci-fi and horror, and as a sci-fi/fantasy geek in high school who also was reading the classics, I found that idea very attractive. I’ve kept to that. While I’ve written high – my peer reviewed academic history Exiles in Sepharad: TheJewish Millennium in Spain (Univ. of Neb. Press/Jewish Publication Society), as well as the legal analysis I write for Law360 such as “An Alternative Legal Argument Against Trump’s Travel Ban,” I have self-published on Kindle a thriller, a Y.A. fantasy, and I am on my third draft of a Sci-fi novel called The Dark Forever, about dark matter and the Kabballah.”

Teunis student, Gail Robinson, said, “He was an amazing teacher. As a writer and occasional teacher of writing, I think of him often.”

John Diamond, Professor of Psychiatry  at East Carolina University, remarked, “That man changed my life in many ways. His loss was such a tragedy.”

Julie Tyrrell wrote,  “He was a remarkable teacher”

One classmate explained, “Our experience with Mr. Teunis gave us exposure to writers from the Western canon that I did not encounter again in the educational process, despite a liberal-arts education at a respectable college. That is important because a familiarity with those writers, and their style of writing, is helpful in appreciating the richness of the English language and in understanding literary references in later works. In a real sense, Mr. Teunis’ class was the first college course I took, and what he taught me was essentially English as a Second Language for someone who thought it was his first language.”

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Sue-Ann Staake-Wayne, Class of 1968, was one of the Teunis Shakespeare performers. She shared, “The creative aspect never left me. He was a big influence for my love of theater.”  She played Reagan in King Lear and Queen Elizabeth in Richard III. “Play preparations and rehearsals stared in the summer and performed the following October. Tickets were $1.00,” she recalled.

“That summer I will never forget. Who thought that a 15-year-old could memorize Shakespeare? It was intense. He [Teunis] was everybody’s understudy – he knew the entire play without a script! He would leave us performance notes in our cast mailboxes. In one note, he stressed the importance to make my scene emotionally and physically intense – ‘You are to be making out with Cornwall, not just touching hands. The handholding must be extremely sensual.’”

“He was a shy man. We worked to please him. It was hard to tell, but we learned that if he didn’t say anything, it was OK.”

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“The following summer after classes ended, he took our cast to his Shenandoah retreat We swam and relaxed. It was the same place that he died two years later.”

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Additional tributes claim, “Mr. Teunis significantly influenced the form of my life. I still look back in awe at all that he taught us. What a gifted teacher he was – he made us think and grow to do more than we ever thought we could.”

“Mr. Teunis’ intellectual challenges, his modesty, humor, and cartoons. still inspired me. He was a true hero and for me, a lifetime role model.”

“What genius, patience, generosity. What a man!”

Before coming to teach at Kennedy, Mr. Teunis taught at another Montgomery County high school. One of  their alumni recalled his statement  at the beginning of a school year, “I’ve reviewed the English syllabus and reading list prescribed by the Montgomery County Board of Education. And, after careful consideration, have decided to dispense with it.” Several weeks before the end of that school year, he told the class, “It has been brought to my attention that we’ve ignored the whole required course of study. I can’t understand how this happened. To remedy the oversight, I am posting a list of the books we should have covered over the past year. Please hand in a three-page report on any one of them by next week.” Classic Teunis.

He was with us just a short time before perishing at 34, in the Shenandoah River on June 20, 1970.  His influence continues. Perhaps, that is the meaning of immortality.