I remember thinking of Mr. Howard in the lead up to the Iraq war when  U.S.-France discussions & cooperation broke down shortly after Villepan remarked "Il faut discuter".  V meant of course that better thinking comes from bumping heads in open discussion, but I suspected it was taken dismissively to mean we must talk,...and talk and talk.  I remember Mr. Howard awakening us to the fact that the goal wasn't just to learn a language but also a cultural environment.  For my particular career this has been especially helpful and I've been grateful to Mr. Howard for making it so clear.

He also taught me that it helps to ask for what you want and that teachers are energized by interest.  One day I dropped in after school to ask him what  to do if I really wanted to learn French.  He more or less burst with a deluge of tapes, magazines, and books in the coming weeks, all presented with enthusiastic openings to engage in all sorts of topics.  What a disappointment I must have been when a while later my interest waned as I sensed that the cost-benefit ratio for learning a language in the American system was perhaps lower than any other subject and decided somewhat arrogantly and lazily it's better to just go abroad.

We're all different and I suspect others had varying experiences but my experience with Mr. Howard was that there would be no end of support depending on my own level of interest.