Teacher Spotlight: Robert Powers Emboldened Me To Become A Writer

BOSTON, MA — Great teachers matter. In Boston, we're fortunate to have teachers like Robert Powers.

Patch has partnered with T-Mobile to recognize teachers and show them how much they’re valued and appreciated.

This submission comes from Jacques Fleury, who nominated Robert Powers of Boston.

Teacher’s name

Robert Powers

How do you know the teacher?

He was my creative writing teacher when I was a student Boston English High School.

What does this person teach?

English

Why do you believe the teacher should be recognized or honored?

Here is a story I wrote from my book, You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self:

It is with great fervor and honor that I write about Mr. Powers, my favorite English teacher at the oldest public school in America, Boston English High School (est. 1821).

I remember the first time I met him with lapidary clarity. It was at the confluence of my experiences as a bilingual student and the ensuing culture clash having immigrated to America from Haiti. He was sitting down when I walked into his classroom. He looked up with a sort of wild-eyed mystic, full of wisdom and truth and a rather refreshing informal disposition. The sun seeping from the glass window made his dirty blond hair shimmer, rendering it nearly golden. I came to proffer my candidacy as a writer for the EHS literary magazine “IMPRESSIONS” at the request of my journalism teacher and editor of the school newspaper, Mrs. Halloran. After introductions, I handed him a sample of a story I had written. He snatched it with gusto and curiosity and began perusing it immediately.

I stood before him, my heart thudding as if with the analogous intensity of a bird’s rapid heart rate. I thought that if THIS was how it felt to anticipate being judged for my writing: was I really ready!? Sure, I had been judged for my journalism writings, but that was different; that was just an amalgamation of facts and academic forms. THIS, however, was my heart on a piece of paper, an esoteric construction of my imagination and my hitherto life observations and nascent wisdom.

After he was done, he glanced up at me with a resolute smile and I just knew that he was going to let me have it! But then again, particularly back then as a mostly melancholy teen, I anticipated the worst in life. He said, “Are you serious about becoming a writer?” and I said, “Yes” without any hesitation. “Ok then, can I be totally honest with you? I nodded my head ‘Yes’. ‘Some students break into tears on me, YOU won’t, will you?” And I shook my head “NO” without flinching. Then he sat me down, and red-marked my story to death! One word in particular stayed in my mind until this day…he wrote “TRITE TRITE TRITE!!!” all over my work. Apparently, I was using an overabundance of what he considered to be banal language that permeated my script. He felt that I should make my works my own, and use words that “wake up” the reader rather than subdue them with monotonous circumlocution or verbosity. I became genuinely intrigued by his wild-eyed earnest honesty: he was like a mad literary scientist, full of efficacious ideas and suggestions, and I couldn’t take notes fast enough.

After that encounter, we began working together regularly after school, he published my stories in IMPRESSIONS and we developed a mutual respect. He selected me among a handful of students to represent English High along with the Boston Latin School in a two-week summer literary seminar at Andover Academy in Andover, Massachusetts; which culminated in the participants publishing a literary magazine and giving a public reading for faculty and family. The magazine had three titles: “IMPRESSIONS/No Repression of Expression/In Our Own Write”.

Then Mr. Powers bestowed upon me the highest honor any bilingual student had hitherto received, making me editor-in-chief of IMPRESSIONS. Because of his demonstrated belief in me, I became emboldened in my pursuit of a career in writing. After high school, I was on the editing staff of the literary magazine ‘The Watermark’ at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. I have since had and still have columns in many newspapers and magazines, my first book “Sparks in the Dark” was featured in the Boston Globe and I have published four books total, the latest being You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self in which Mr. Powers's story is featured and is sold at the Grolier Bookshop, the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Amazon and worldwide online. I have also been included in five anthologies, one of which is from Cornell University Press.

I owe a generous debt of gratitude to Mr. Powers for his tough-talking, disciplined & inspiring methods that helped propel me to the literary and life success that I enjoy today. THANK YOU, MR. POWERS, wherever you are.

What's one thing you want everyone to know about the teacher?

He was kind.

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