I've taught next door to Margaret Cho for twenty-one years.
(pause)
And for twenty-one years, I've heard chemistry happening.
Our classrooms shared a wall on the third floor. I taught literature. She taught chemistry. I spent my days asking students to keep their voices down so we could hear the nuances of a poem. Margaret spent hers presiding over controlled chaos — beakers clinking, reactions fizzing, students shouting discoveries across lab benches. Her room was the loudest classroom on the third floor. Probably the loudest in the building.
(pause)
The principal once asked her to keep it down.
She said no.
And that, in a sentence, is Margaret Cho.
(pause)
Thirty-two years she taught here. Thirty-two years of lab reports and safety goggles and that mysterious coffee mug on her desk that said "Do not make me use the periodic table." Nobody ever found out who gave it to her. I asked once. She just smiled.
Three of her former students became science teachers themselves. Two of them are here tonight, which tells you something about the kind of teacher she was — the kind you come back for.
(pause)
In 2009, when the school flooded and her lab was destroyed, I thought she'd have to cancel classes for weeks. The equipment was ruined. The materials were gone. I watched her carry out boxes of soaked papers and figured that was the end of the semester.
She rebuilt the entire curriculum from photocopies. She finished the semester without missing a single class.
That's who sat next door to me for two decades. Someone who doesn't miss class. Someone who says no to the principal when the learning is too loud to contain.
(pause)
This fall, Margaret is spending six months in Portugal. In a town she's never visited. She's already learning the imperfect subjunctive, which is exactly the kind of thing Margaret would do — pick the hardest verb tense just to see what happens when you try.
I'm going to miss the noise next door. I'm going to miss knowing someone that stubborn and that devoted is right on the other side of the wall.
Margaret — thank you for thirty-two years of good teaching and for showing all of us what it looks like to take the work seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Here's to the next loud adventure.