In Morgantown, where just as many townie kids stay as their classmates who move on, it’s not uncommon to encounter an old teacher from high school in the checkout lane — so you can tell him you didn’t learn a thing in his class.
Michael Roh, who teaches physics at University High, had just such an interaction recently.
How did the teacher who was just recognized with a Yale Educator Award — yes, that Yale — respond?
We’ll get to that Yale award, which is significant, since another student nominated him.
But that wasn’t that student. It was this one.
After they talked, and she confessed, he chuckled.
He wished her well. He felt complimented.
Because she wasn’t telling the full truth.
Yes, she did struggle in his class.
To be fair, it was advanced-placement physics.
Physics is about how something, say, a mass of some sort, acts (or reacts) when you push it.
Or pull it.
Physics is about how something behaves when you try to get it to conquer gravity, or when it inevitably submits to it.
Just ask Galileo or Isaac Newton.
Physics is either a head-scratcher or a head-banger. You either rock and roll, or you don’t.
The kid did pass. But, as said, she didn’t feel like she actually learned anything. In her mind, she just thought she was lucky she got out alive.
Galileo, take the wheel
Except, her mind had other ideas. And she remembered, all these years later.
Heck, her synapses crank into memory anytime she’s behind the wheel and steering into a curve, she told her teacher during their grocery store reunion.
Because behind every road sign with that swooping arrow reminding you to not run off the road. Messrs. Galileo and Newton are lurking, you see.
And every instance when she takes a curve, she time-travels.
She remembers Mr. Roh’s lesson plan on that subject: The physics of driving your car. Into a turn, specifically.
There’s the engine (energy) that propels your vehicle forward and the opposing rush of air (friction) wants to hold it back (inertia). There are the four wheels that remain on the pavement (gravity) which you’d rather not conquer, unless you’re an off-roader.
“She said, ‘You know I still think about it when I’m driving,’” Roh remembered her saying. “Every time.”
“I laughed and said, ‘Hey, I did my job then.’”
“I don’t want you be a scientist, if you don’t want to be a scientist,” he continued.
If you’re in his classroom, he just wants you doing critical thinking about your world, whatever the terms you define and consider the blue sphere.
Roh, who is 57, became a teacher, really, when he was 22 and went to the African country of Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Until then, he defined himself as a mechanical and aerospace engineer, having graduated from WVU with degrees in those disciplines in 1986.
“Honestly, I wasn’t thinking about education at all.”
All at once
If Kenya had been a driver’s test on preconceived notions, the once-and-future educator would’ve had to come back the following week.
“I thought I’ll go over and work on bridges or wells,” he said. “Some kind of infrastructure project because of the engineering.”
“Then he found out he was going to be teaching, and no, it wasn’t going to be English as a Second Language.
Roh was appointed to a small, rural school. He had a box of chalk and an unpainted wall he wrote on every day. He had a rag to wipe off the wall at the end of the day. Everything was a revelation.
Everything.
For one, his students were multilingual. Their tribal dialects. Swahili. English.
They were fluent in five languages. Ten languages.
“And they would just as soon speak English than Swahili,” Roh said.
Every student there had four years of physics, four years of chemistry, four years of biology and four years of math.
Roh had to do his own homework — and fast. He was enlisted to teach math, physics and chemistry. In doing so, he encountered the Holy Grail-kernel of awareness for every educator out there.
“If you want to really learn something, if you ever want to master something, go out and teach it.”
Kenya lessons in Morgantown
Roh spent a lot of time looking up in Kenya.
Literally.
He was in a rural locale. There was no nightlife to speak of. In evenings, he’d invariably find himself outside looking up at the vastness of the stars.
He’d look up and think, “Huh, maybe I am a teacher.”
The reflected glow from those stars and new awareness stayed with him back in the States and in Morgantown.
He became a substitute teacher, working mainly at UHS. In 1994, he got a full-time job there. Math and AP physics.
In recent years, he was also an assistant football coach for the Hawks. Don’t think football and physics mix?
Get him to tell you about punts and hang-time, with the gravity of the football, the force of the kicking leg and the arc of a parabola.
“You get a physics guy who’s a football guy and that’s it,” he said.
“I know my students probably wish I’d quit talking about football so much.”
Or, maybe not.
The Yale Educator Award might say otherwise.
Of this year’s 305 nominees, 50 teachers and 21 counselors were selected for the honor. They represent 38 U.S. states and 17 countries, from Alabama to Egypt. One of his fellow recipients is from a more-affluent school an hour away from the village in Kenya where he taught.
“Full circle,” Roh said.
Believe it or not, no — it wasn’t for extra credit
Aiden Palmer’s WVU studies in biomedical engineering keep him pretty busy, so the past UHS graduate who nominated his favorite teacher wasn’t available for this story.
Roh said he was heartened and surprised by the nomination.
“Especially because it came from a student.”
One day, Roh remembered, Palmer came to class with a project that wasn’t assigned. It wasn’t even for extra credit.
“We were talking about a fluidized bed in class one day,” the teacher said.
The specialized device has practical applications in just about every industry, from “powder-coating” custom automobiles to helping manage aquaculture production.
Picture setting a sandbox onto the surface of an air hockey table, the teacher said.
The air jets suspend the sand, “fluidizing” it, he said — that is, making it feel exactly like liquid if you dip your hand in.
Palmer was intrigued, so he went home and made one for the class.
“It was a little rough, but it worked,” Roh said.
“I was amazed. Having a student so bright and so curious makes teaching a pretty easy job.”
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