Rick Young - Helping Kids Get It

Rick Young is just as romantic as you’d expect an English teacher to be after 43 years of inspiring high schoolers to see the beauty in well-crafted literature. It’s a challenge -- especially when you’re competing with gossip rags and reality TV -- but the best thing about teaching, he said, is “when you see something come alive in a kid’s eyes, when they get it. There’s nothing like that moment when someone gets it.”

Next week, the school board will finalize his retirement. “Working on retirement is like a third job,” he said. Between teaching American Studies and Creative Writing at during the day, teaching speech at Milwaukee Area Technical College in the evenings, and preparing for retirement, he’s been busy.

Young’s been teaching since 1968; he spent three years at Port Washington before teaching at Nicolet. He also coached forensics for 25 years. Now he participates as a freelance speech judge – he’s judging the Sheboygan South Forensics Invitational this weekend.

Young plans to retire briefly, but hopes to teach again at MATC. “I like working with adults and I want to keep teaching,” he said. “I believe I have a calling.” In the meantime, he plans to spend time with his family and friends and write poetry. “I enjoy boring things like gardening with cheap cigars,” he said.

A romantic at heart, Young is passionate about the subjects he teaches: art and literature. “I was highly romantic as a youth,” he said, and since then he developed admiration for writers and artists such as Mark Twain, Jackson Pollock and Thomas Hart Benton, and knows them like old friends. “If you’ve taught Emily Dickinson for so many years, you feel like you know her,” he said.

“Like a lot of teacher wannabes, I had heroes who were teachers,” Young said. “Back at teacher school, one of my professors, a grizzled old guy, looked at me over his glasses and said, ‘It’s good to have a couple idealists in our troops.’ I love art, I love literature, and I teach what I’m passionate about.”

Young uses humor in his classes. Kristy Leopold, a Nicolet junior in American Studies, said, "He doesn’t force his teachings upon anybody. He also brings his humor into class. As a seventeen year old, there isn’t much that keeps me focused during my last period in the day. But Young’s class is different. Every day I can expect hilarious imitations or faces. To make sure we’re listening, Mr. Young will play upon words just to make us laugh. He makes learning fun."

Young often tries to bring the subjects to life. When teaching about architect Frank Llyod Wright, he sent students to take photos of Wright-related sites. He has a fascination with the humanity of artists – those who are “on this earth, but not of it.”

"One of his qualities is his ability to make fun of himself and his generation. He also has a 'cultural literacy' requirement every quarter, in which each student has to bring something to class that reflects what we've been learning in class in the real world. For example, there have been several articles about Frank Lloyd Wright and his achievements in Wisconsin that have come into class, as well as lyrics from popular songs, and cartoons, " said Kellen Carey, Nicolet junior.

“Frank Lloyd Wright was such a genius, and such a lousy human being,” Young said. “Nobody says he was a nice person. But he was so inspired. I love the visionary that he was. He saw music in architecture; the true definition of what a genius is," he said.

Young strives to pass some of that inspiration on to his students. “There are a lot of challenges – mostly arrogance and apathy,” he said. “It’s the funny things, or when a kid says ‘thank you,’ those are the moments you keep coming back for.”

Thanks to email, he said, “students drop in on me after a quarter of a century.” He enjoys being able to stay in touch.

As parting advice to the younger generation, Young said students should avoid the arrogance and lethargy of reality TV culture. “Discover yourself, do something, be creative. Don’t fritter it away on obsession with celebrities and gossip. Produce something!”