In remembrance of John Piil, my beloved junior high computer teacher. He passed away about 6 months ago, and this is what I wrote.
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I graduated in 1987 from a pretty non-descript and lackluster junior high school called parsons junior high.
I was in the honors track and that meant that four of my teachers were the powerhouse team of Paul Lubard (math), Julius Khan (science), Sheila Sachs (English) and John Piil (computer science.) Not only were each of them gifted in their subject, but they were gifted teachers, expert not just in delivery of the material but in grabbing and maintaining the attention of their pre-teen students.
I assure you; this is no small task and the four of them were expert at this.
If that weren’t enough, the four of them were best buds, and very often we were treated with a comedy show of one of them walking into the classroom, interrupting the other teaching, talking some trash to each other and entertaining the crap out of us. It was always the best part of the day, because they were so funny and they always let us watch the show; they really didn’t hold much back.
Each kid at some point had to pick a “major,” but we were only given a couple of options. Music, art, one or two other things I can’t remember (all of the details are fuzzy) but one of those things was computer science.
What did that even mean in the late 80s? Not much. We played lemonade stand, an economy simulator on a computer where the program had to load on a cassette tape for fuck’s sake. Like, when was there even time for the lesson waiting for that thing to load?
I had always been great at math, and this was further inspired by Mr. Lubard’s teachings, and even at that young age, or maybe I was pushed, who can remember... I chose computer science with Mr. Piil.
At the beginning, I was the only girl.
We learned to code. I was a girl who coded in the 80s in a NYC public high school, and it was because of Mr. Piil.
A lot of that coding stuck with me, and I actually still use it sometimes because the BASIC programming language we used back then is similar to the language used by modern Texas instruments graphing calculators. I did some work with teacher education for Texas Instruments when I began teaching in 1996 and it was very helpful to know.
Mr. Piil, clearly ahead of his time pedagogically, was also a total badass. A completely inappropriate badass, and we LOVED it. Things were different back then; you could get away with a lot more back then than you could now. But Mr. Piil must have been called to the principal’s office for his shenanigans A LOT.
Mr. Piil never wore a dress shirt or tie; it was jeans and a t-shirt. He cursed around us. He sometimes smoked a cigarette outside the window while we were in class.
One time, there was a kid named Richard who was very obnoxious (actually, we all were, sarcastic and obnoxious... I’m POSITIVE that’s where I learned to be sarcastic, obnoxious, and always be on my toes) and kept talking shit to Mr. Piil about how he knew karate and could take him down. Mr. Piil let him grandstand for a while and then got up, calmly walked over to Richard, scooped him up and (gently) flipped him onto the ground, deftly spreading his legs open and suspending his foot threateningly over Richard’s 13-year-old crotch and just said “oh yeah?”
He might have been smoking a cigarette while doing it.
Total badass. The Anthony Bourdain of education.
Inappropriate shenanigans aside, as i look back to those years, what I remember most is that all four of these teachers SAW me. They HEARD me. They VALUED me and what I had to say.
It was the late 80s and three male teachers in STEM treated me exactly like everyone else. I never felt like I was ignored, I never felt like I was talked down to, I never felt like I was less than.
Young women have historically been pushed out of STEM disciplines for so long, by both men AND women, and I had the honor of having THREE male role models who allowed me to express myself mathematically without trepidation or shame.
I have been blessed with many excellent STEM mentors and role models in my life, but these were the first and most formative.
Without being trite, there’s no job more important than teaching.
And these teachers were visionaries.
Thank you, John Piil, for being who you were to me, to us, and to countless other little assholes who you had to deal with every day.
You were one in a million. I’d say one in a google, but I’m guessing that word hadn’t even existed yet.
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