How does one end up touched by a teacher who oversaw both the demolition of the front teeth (a mother's third greatest fear) and the severing to a thread of the left eyelid (a mother's second greatest fear)?  I was small enough that Mr. Brooks was afraid to put me in the scrimmage when our freshman football team played an older team.  That angered me but it didn't take long before I sensed that Mr. Brooks cared about his students in a parental way that in my experience was unique.  When I tackled our own fullback head-to-head in a scrimmage and my face mask shattered into my mouth I saw a soulful silent  caring on Mr. Brooks' face that was unmistakeable.  Later, in hockey, when a stick somehow grazed my eye leaving the eyelid hanging by a thread, without ever touching the eyeball, I saw the same face again.

In the history of the 20th century, some might see de Beauvoir's uncovering of objectification, not necessarily related to feminism at all, as perhaps one of the century's greatest contributions.  While we view ourselves in ways that are enormously complex and subject to endless vulnerabilities, the human mind somehow almost always looks out to other human beings and sees them in the simplest of terms, as objects.  Mr. Brooks was a man who could see into the experiences of another with natural, intuitive understanding.  This was extra-ordinary, especially for the coach of a sports team, and his modeling of the ability was perhaps the highest form of teaching.  I still try to discipline myself to do a little of what came to him naturally.

He taught a mean course in geometry too, but I think I noticed that that particualr course has attributes which enable it to teach itself to some degree.

P.S. In case it sounds like I'm romanticizing high school sports, I now tell my grandchildren I wish I had spent more time reading.