Remembering Larrivee

As I write, Jacques-Andre Larrivee, one of the best teachers I've ever had, has been dead for about two and a half years.

There are so many people who were closer to him than I was, who he shaped and helped and engaged more potently than he ever did for me, so maybe I'm not the best voice to be saying this.

He did shape me, though. In my awkward, nervous, messy, and I won't hesitate to say, catastrophic grade nine year, it was par for the course for me to cringe inward without even thinking about it, to accept my role as "the weird quiet kid" and live with it, dammit, because I was so sure that no one would be interested in anything I had to say.

Larrivee helped me redefine myself. I don't know if he noticed. I don't know if he ever knew what an affect he had on me, or if he thought everything he told me went right over my head. But after that course with him, I made a conscious effort to stop being so shy, to reach out. Some of my attempts were successful, many were not. But I tried. And that was because Larrivee pushed me to do so. I resented it at the time, because I was scared. But I am so, so grateful for it now. The last few years of high school were actually a lot of fun, and that was because I stopped being so scared.

That started, with shaky, stumbling steps, within the second week of grade nine, when he had us do improv. In front of the class.

I'm a drama kid, but improv has never ever been my strong suit. I love watching it. I even know enough about it to point out when someone isn't really doing it properly. But I have never been good at it. And half the class was people I had never met before. And I was scared.

But I was going to have to do it, and I didn't want to hear more about how shy I was from this teacher who was irritated with people who didn't talk, so I faked confidence, threw off my shawl of shyness, and did it. And? Larrivee even remarked on what a good job I did. I'm not saying I was a pile of self-confidence after that. I wasn't. It still took a long time for me to get to the point of casually chatting with people I didn't know, and making some good friends in the process. But I remember that improv pretty clearly, because those were the first steps, and they were important.

But this is what I remember most. Small thing, but this thing completely changed how I viewed myself.

At the beginning of the year, Larrivee had mentioned offhand that by the end of the semester, he would have a word for each of us. A few weeks from the end of the semester, someone asked him if he had the words yet. He agreed to do it, if we all gave a word to describe him as well.

He went around the class. Gave everyone a different descriptor. People gave him descriptors back. Laughs, rolled eyes. It was a good time.

He came to me.

I don't want to overstate the drama of this, but it really was a frozen moment for me. Why? Because I was so used to being "the weird quiet kid". That's how I had been known before. That's how I knew myself. But, for reasons I couldn't articulate to myself at the time, I really, really didn't want him to say that. The moment hung in the air for what seemed like much longer than it was as he considered me in silence.

The word he eventually said was, "Intellectual."

It changed everything. It didn't mean weird, it didn't mean shy. It didn't make me feel like an outsider. It meant I liked to think.

Again, not to overstate this, but it changed everything. Because that was an identity I was happy with. That was an identity I could be proud of. That word made me feel so much less pathetic. And it was true. And he was the one who saw that in me first. Merci, Monsieur, je ne peux jamas vous repayer. C'est bizarre qu'un seul mot peut changer tout ca, n'est-ce pas?

Anyway, why bring all this up? What spurred this weird sudden outpouring of feelings and appreciation for a teacher who, while he was teaching, mostly just made me nervous? Who has unfortunately been gone for pretty long now? No, there's no special anniversary. It's just that I was sent an article about him by my friend, who was much closer to him and to whom he meant much more than he did to me. The article had us both in tears.

Please read it. Let the legacy of Larrivee live on.

http://www.huskiesinthehatch.com/teaching-its-basically-just-well-paid-babysitting-with-cushy-summers-off/

Merci, Monsieur, pour tout que vous avez faire pour vos eleves. Nous etions chanceux de vous avoir, et nous vous oublierons jamais. Reposez en paix.