Dudley Barlow, mentor/friend

Jennifer Buehler came to us at Plymouth-Canton High School after graduating from Yale and teaching for two years in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Our department chair asked me to be her mentor. Jennifer didn’t need much mentoring. My job was primarily: making her comfortable in the school, introducing her around, showing where the book storage room and copy machine were, and telling her when there would be donuts in the library. Jennifer didn’t eat donuts.

As it turned out, it wasn’t long before she was mentoring the rest of us. She started by creating a classroom library. Many of the book were her own copies of young adult novels. These books were curated to allow the kids to make some choices of their own, to introduce some new titles and authors into the standard syllabus, and to break up the lockstep trek through: Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lord of the Flies, and other standard ninth grade fare.

Jennifer also introduced lit circles as a place where students could discuss ideas and characters they found in these new books. If these new elements Jennifer put into her teaching were gifts to her students, her gift to her new colleagues was the pleasure of her daily company. She was so smart, creative, joyful, and compassionate. Before I met her, Sharon said to me: “You’re going to love this girl, Dudley.” She was right. I did. We all did.