My teacher Tim Walz helped change the course of my life

We need people in the White House who are curious about other points of view. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, is one such person.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Walz was my world geography teacher at Mankato West High School in Minnesota. I will never forget sitting in his classroom as he passionately taught his lesson of the day. Mr. Walz didn’t just stand at the front of the room and talk to his students. He gestured. He paced. He asked us questions.

Our high school didn’t have air conditioning, and you knew it had been a lively class when Mr. Walz’s forehead was sweaty by the time the bell rang. The man never stopped moving. He made us excited to learn more about the world outside our small town.

Mr. Walz shared many of his experiences with us, from his childhood in Nebraska to his service in the National Guard. (I remember the day he explained why he often spoke so loudly. He had some hearing loss from his time in the Guard.) Before coming to Minnesota, Mr. Walz had spent time teaching in China. He shared his experiences there and even taught us a little Pinyin, the Chinese phonetic system that uses the Latin alphabet.

During one particularly memorable lesson, Mr. Walz and another student were quietly arguing at the front of the class. The argument escalated until the student pushed his desk away. Mr. Walz sent the student to the principal’s office.

The rest of us sat in silence and shock—until the student returned to the classroom with a smirk on his face. Mr. Walz admitted that they had staged the whole “argument.” He then asked us all to write a report of what had happened. We all remembered the incident slightly differently. He taught us a valuable and powerful lesson about perspective, memory, and eyewitness testimony.

But it wasn’t the most important lesson I learned from Mr. Walz.

Ever since I can remember, I always wanted to be a writer. In my third year, I enrolled in the creative writing class. During the poetry unit, we all wrote a poem on a large sheet of paper and hung it in the hallway on the second floor.

My poem was about shyness. People who knew me then would not have been surprised by my choice of subject. I was shy and quiet, but full of ideas and opinions. But I was often too afraid to express them. Writing was a natural outlet for me. (It still is.)

After I hung my poem, I decided it wasn’t quite finished. I took a marker and wrote a loose line at the bottom: “Sometimes the people who don’t talk have the most to say.”

A few students complimented my poem. A senior on the basketball team even said it was her friend’s new favorite poem. As a young writer, it was great to receive that positive feedback.

One day I was at my locker when Mr. Walz came up to me. He had read my poem and was curious about the last line I had added. “Is that true?” he asked me. “About people who don’t talk much and yet have a lot to say?”

Mr. Walz was one of the most popular teachers in the school. He was outgoing and friendly to everyone. And he seemed genuinely interested in a point of view that I don’t think he had thought much about until he read what I said. Perhaps he also knew that I needed someone who recognized that quiet students have value, too.

Mr. Walz was the only teacher in school who asked me about my poem. We had a good conversation, and his interest in my perspective lingered long after I graduated. Over the years, I’ve had a handful of teachers who encouraged me to keep writing, in ways big and small. Mr. Walz was one of those teachers.

Character and curiosity matter. They matter in our homes, in our schools, in our communities, and in our government. Tim Walz has these qualities in spades.