I’m spending a lot of time at memorials these days.
Partly it’s to do with living in a small town with a median age well above the national average. Partly it’s to do with loving people, being close to them, and wanting to stay present when they go.
I had the chance to speak about my 7th grade teacher, Peter Thielke, this past Saturday. I think more people should know about this lovely man, so I’m republishing my speech on my blog. Writing—and especially writing that expects to be read aloud—has been feeling so alive to me lately. Good thing, too: I have to write another one of these (for my dad, no pressure) in the next five weeks.
Anyway, here are some words:
Hello, everyone. My name is Lucy Bellwood. I had the great joy of being Peter’s student almost 25 years ago.
I was twelve when we met. The teachers I’d had at Oak Grove up till then had taught me many things, but a fluent understanding of mathematics was not among them. I entered 7th grade carrying a level of insecurity around the subject that often left me near tears.
Peter was into math the way other people are into sports teams. His patient encouragement, carrying over into many after-school study sessions, taught me to tolerate the discomfort of not knowing. I didn’t learn to love math that year, but I learned that it rewarded persistence; that I was capable of arriving at an answer. I know now that this is a much higher predictor of success than intelligence or expertise.
He taught me many truths, but there was one lie I carried for years after leaving his class.
We’d built our own desks that year. The classroom was littered with them—some low and curved, others precise and upright, some with drawers and some without, all in shades ranging from deep mahogany to pale birch. Each one felt like an extension of the student who’d built it. (Mine, a low walnut crescent moon, is now a desk for a twelve-year-old I love in Ojai. I’ve visited another in Flagstaff, Arizona. A third sits in a classmate’s parents’ living room on Shady Lane. They stay with us.)
I’d spent years telling people that yes indeed, my 7th grade teacher taught us to design and build our own desks. It felt like the perfect encapsulation of my time at Oak Grove.
So when I had the chance to see Peter in the months before his death, I made sure to tell him about my desk, and about the people I’d shared it with, and how grateful I was he’d given us that freedom to experiment and learn under his guidance.
He raised his eyebrows. “But that was your idea.”
I was speechless. He was insistent.
He said that yes, he’d had students build desks every year, but before our class came along they’d all been built to the same specifications. “It was you, Lucy Bellwood, who asked why you couldn’t each come up with your own designs.”
How could I have forgotten?
“I had a bit of an educator’s crisis about it,” he admitted. “I went home and wrestled with the idea for days before I said yes—and then it turned out to be so fun.”
My appreciation for his teaching deepened so much that morning, because it was clear that none of this happened by accident. Peter weighed the options, and then he made a choice. Guiding sixteen kids through their own design process was undoubtedly more work than having them build from a single plan, but it was the richer option by far.
Granted: there were limits. He said I’d wanted a four-poster frame with a canopy as part of my design, which was a firm no-go. This, too, is good teaching. Sometimes we need guardrails. But he said “yes” to us in so many other ways—when we wanted to build a ladder to the loft in our classroom or paint a mural on the wall. He gave us ownership of our quest for knowledge.
In the months since that conversation, I’ve realized how much Peter’s skill as a woodworker infused his teaching practice. Wood, like people, has its own opinions about where it wants to go. Education is often conceptualized as a top-down process—the expert imparting wisdom to the inept. Peter understood that it is far more rich and strange: the teacher reveals to the student what they are capable of. He honors their curiosities, their instincts, their passions. He collaborates. He brings out the luster of the grain.
My father died almost a year ago. His decline was long, and marked by a lack of lucidity that meant I never got to have the kinds of conversations with him that I had with Peter. Caring for my dad over the last five years of his life left me out of touch with myself, but it also brought home the truth that it is vital to spend time with the people we love while they are alive. This is true whether or not they can carry on a conversation. We must tolerate the discomfort of not knowing how long we have.
As I cycled home from my last meeting with Peter, still crying through the scent of orange blossom, I remembered more about the 12-year-old I’d been. I’d spent so much time focusing on her inexperience, her insecurity, her bad-at-math-ness, that I’d forgotten her creativity and boldness. I’d forgotten about her willingness to try.
This was the gift he gave me. Even after so many years and so many students, he saw me at a time when I was, once again, struggling to see myself. And he gave that gift the same way he always had: with ease and humor and encouragement—even in the face of his own mortality.
This is what the very best teachers do: they give us back to ourselves.
Thank you for being here to celebrate him. May we each carry on his work in our own way.
