'The child is father of the man'
The secret to being memorable is in not seeking this out as a goal at all. The key is putting all of your energy, focus, and interest into serving others.
It was fall 1987. The first day of my senior year in high school in Olathe, Kansas. The bell rang and as students we slid into our desks. It was seventh hour, our final class. Since that room bordered the front face of Olathe North High School, with windows filling the entire wall, it was as though the outdoors were calling us to finish the day.
Our teacher, Doug Clark, was nowhere to be seen.
This was odd. It was our first day back at school. It was seventh hour. The anticipation is always great for students as they go to each class for the first time. Who else is in the class with me? Is the teacher just like you heard he or she was? Will I get homework on the first day?
But the room was full of students, and students alone.
A full two minutes after the bell rang, with whoosh from the hallway, Mr. Clark burst into the room like a ball of fire. These were the first words he uttered:
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
He said them with gusto.
What in the world is happening here?
Teachers don’t do this.
In an instant, he had captivated a class of restless 17- and 18-year-olds with a poem. We were mesmerized. We were in awe.
He could have taken any number of traditional teacher’s approaches to seizing control of the classroom.
He could have been sensitive and thoughtful, as he gently introduced himself and told us why he loved teaching and what we would be accomplishing that year as a group.
He could have been pragmatic and shared his background, as well as the texts we’d be studying and what he hoped to teach us, if we would be good listeners and participants.
He could have been demanding and authoritarian to seize control and assert himself in the classroom.
He did none of those things.
He just reeled us in to the reason we were there.
I had never seen a teacher take control with such intention.
He was unlike any other teacher I’d ever experienced. How he made me feel about learning something new was powerful and compelling and immediate. This all transpired within a matter of minutes.
It was entirely unexpected, but instantly respected across the classroom.
As the days, weeks, and the year went by, several of us developed a John Keating-like reverence for Doug Clark (though Dead Poets Society wouldn’t hit the theaters for a couple more years).
Countless more poems would be permanently etched in our memories before the end of our high school careers finally arrived in May. I can still recite those lines from Wordsworth and several of Shakespeare’s sonnets without any help, a full 30 years later.
Maybe Mr. Clark gave us a masterclass in how to be memorable. But what he really gave us a masterclass in was how to captivate a crowd.
For years I thought about how he took charge of that class in that way, and wondered how I could apply that lesson to my life. He made me instantly care about new material I may not have been otherwise interested in, ever.
But he didn’t do it by drawing attention to himself. He did it by pulling us in like a tractor beam to the material so we'd love it from Minute One.
It was utterly memorable. Literally unforgettable.
Years later I was able to track down Mr. Clark's contact info to give him a ring. We had the best conversation you could have with a former mentor you'd lost touch with over the years.
He was no longer teaching, but occasionally volunteering to help with special education children in the Kansas City area. I told him what he did for us was in every way special.
His legend lives on with the friends I still stay in touch with from that class, 35 years later.
I still think about how any of us in our chosen professions could emulate this, with just a little more intention. A little more passion. A little more curiosity. A little more courage.
We could create some pretty outstanding memories if we cared enough and put ourselves in others’ shoes.
We could captive our children. Our causes. Re-energize employees. Break down communication barriers. Unwind longstanding rifts. Find common ground.
All with just a little more intention.
This post is really not about ‘how to be memorable’
The title of this post isn’t really what I wanted to share. It doesn’t really do justice to what I wanted to write about regarding Mr. Doug Clark.
Life is not about being memorable for the purpose of being remembered. It’s about breaking patterns so that a soul is stirred, so that a message sticks, so that a principle resonates, so that minds are opened, so that hearts are touched, so that better decisions are made—maybe even jolted, and new behaviors take shape.
That’s the real secret here.
Doug Clark’s impact on me has been lifelong.
In the short term, for me, it resulted in taking an abundance of literature and writing classes at the University of Kansas. Fiction writing from the legendary Carolyn Doty, poetry from the equally legendary Luci Tapahonso, the Literature of Baseball from the beloved James Carothers. I took it all. I ultimately majored in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing.
I never became a writer. But that inspiration did result in me creating two past side projects that required me to publish thousands of words every month. It earned me new clients as a sales professional in my career. It earned me promotions I would not have otherwise earned. I developed a desire to always find the just the words, always appreciating big ideas, deeper thoughts, and timeless principles.
I don’t think many of these things (any of these things?) would have happened had Doug Clark not burst into that room that warm afternoon in Olathe, Kansas.
Thanks, Mr. Clark.
