Longtime readers of this and my previous column know how much of an impact my sophomore English teacher, Mr. Peter Kahn, had on my life. I learned last week via a Facebook post from my alma mater (Oak Park and River Forest High School) that after 20 plus years of teaching, Mr. Kahn would be retiring at the end of this school year.
If we were able to jump in a time machine and travel back to August of 1999, you would be able to see firsthand just how bad of a student I was. That was the start of my sophomore year, and I believe my GPA was right around 1.7. Even lower than that was my attitude towards school.
That all changed the moment I walked into Mr. Kahn’s classroom. I could immediately tell that something was different; he was young, cool, and had posters all over his room talking about taking the high road in life. He told us how we make the decision each day we wake up whether it would be a good day or not.
In addition to the life lessons, that same year, Mr. Kahn founded the Spoken Word Poetry Club. Up until that point, I didn’t fully appreciate the power of poetry; thanks to Mr. Kahn, that changed. While I was always a bit too shy to perform my own poetry, I attended numerous poetry slams across the suburbs and city of Chicago.
I went on to graduate high school with a 3.2 GPA and had planned on majoring in secondary English education so that I could be the next Mr. Kahn. My plans changed while in college, but it is very fitting that I found my way to working in the education field via my current role with the Muscatine Community School District.
As for Mr. Kahn, he never stopped impacting the lives of his students. For proof of that, do a quick Google search of, “Peter Kahn Oak Park River Forest High School,” and you’ll see the story that ran on CBS Chicago talking about his upcoming retirement and the publication of his first book of poetry (which I preordered as soon as I learned about this).
I’ve kept in touch with Mr. Kahn, most recently by exchanging messages on LinkedIn, where I expressed my gratitude for how much he impacted my life. I hope that you’ll do the same for your own Mr. Kahn. Thanking those who have played essential roles in our lives can be easier said than done, but I promise you, it feels good recognizing them. I struggle to think about where I would be in life had I not found myself in Mr. Kahn’s class.
Congratulations and thank you, Mr. Kahn. I’ll leave you with a quote from my favorite poet, Langston Hughes; “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” Thank you for helping me to fly.
