By Bob Ray Sanders
bobray@star-telegram.com
While in college studying journalism, I was encouraged to get a teaching certificate just in case the doors of newspapers would still be closed to people of my hue when I graduated.
As it turned out, there was a door open in 1969 -- right here at the
Star-Telegram. So, except for my nine weeks of student teaching, I've never taught school full time.
I do spend many hours visiting and lecturing students on all levels, and I've taught several college courses. Although I don't call myself a teacher, I know the impact one person can have in a classroom. Sometimes, you don't know until years later the effect you had on a student. There are those moments that every good, caring teacher feels deeply when a former student reconnects to say thanks.
My friend David Marquis knows that feeling well, and over the years he has been able to share it with audiences all over the country in a one-man play called
I Am a Teacher. He brings his third version of that show to Fort Worth this week.
Marquis, a graduate of Austin College, was 21 when he did his student teaching in English under a woman who taught a mythology class.
After a former student was shot and killed, Marquis at age 26 began writing the play about a day in the life of a young teacher, Ben James.
The play became a hit, mostly by word-of-mouth, and Marquis traveled the country performing it in 40 states in all kinds of venues: small and large theaters (including the Kennedy Center), conferences, a corporate boardroom in New York state and even a congressional hearing room.
Teachers loved it because he brought their voices to a larger public, and he was able to focus on the complicated needs of students as well as the ever-growing dilemmas of an educational system caught up in competing social-political-economic demands.
After publishing a book by the same title in 1990 featuring interviews and photos of teachers from every state, Marquis decided to rewrite and perform the play with an older Ben James trying to decide whether he wanted to remain a teacher.
As he took on other projects, the writer and actor left
I Am a Teacher behind until he started to hear from people as far away as Canada asking if he were still performing it.
In the parking lot of Rangers Ballpark in Arlington after a game one night, Marquis said, a man yelled, "Hey, are you David Marquis? I saw you do your play in 1983."
Marquis took all of those recent inquiries and coincidences as a sign that he should reprise the life of that teacher and continue the story.
"I began to write, and volumes poured out," he told me a few days ago.
He has produced
I Am a Teacher part three, with an aging Ben James contemplating retirement, wondering if he has another good year in him, and being given a young teacher to mentor.
In the preview show in Dallas in September, the teacher under whom he did his student teaching was in the audience, as was an African-American former student he had mentored who had wanted to be an actor and playwright and had fulfilled that dream.
Marquis recalled that the student once said, "Two of the greatest influences in my life are Jesus Christ and David Marquis."
As for revising the play, Marquis said, "Just like it was a calling years ago, it became a calling again."
Marquis will perform
I Am a Teacher Thursday through Sunday at Stage West in Fort Worth. He recommends it for ages 14 and up, not that there's anything inappropriate for younger children. For ticket information call the box office at 817-784-9378.
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays.817-390-7775Twitter: @BobRaySanders
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