Boston,Mass
Some people may say that spending four years in a high school classroom is difficult, but teacher Brian Donaher has spent more than half his life there.
A Boston College High School classics teacher, Donaher, 72, is preparing to celebrate his 50th year teaching at the Morrissey Boulevard school this week.
"The joke is, how do you get to teach for 50 years," Donaher said. "And the joke answer is that you don't retire and you don't die."
"Provided that my health stays good, and I'm blessed with good health, I don't want to stop until it isn't fun anymore," Donaher added. "And that doesn't seem like that's going to be anytime soon."
A 1955 graduate of BC High, Donaher started teaching Latin and Greek to the young men at the college preparatory school when he was 22.
From the start, Donaher was close to his students, both in the classroom and out.
"At the time, I was 22 years of age and I was teaching kids 16 years of age," Donaher said, "and we have a vigorous intramural athletic program here, so in addition to teaching, they used to drag the young teachers out to play sports with them after school as well."
"And that was a lot of fun," he added, "But it also allows you to get to the kids in a completely different context, which was nice."
Donaher's students said his enthusiasm for his subject is palpable.
"For Mr. Donaher, the classics, Latin, Greek never really died," said Jack Maher, a former student who now attends Middlebury College. "You know, they definitely still live on through him."
Donaher's classes aren't just about those languages. In Greek III, for instance, students read sections of the New Testament in Greek and compare it to the translated versions. To make sense of this, the class has two lecturers: Donaher and a theology teacher.
"No matter how good [the translated version] is, there are still differences," Donaher said. "I think the kids enjoy that, too."
He describes his teaching style as interactive, with lots of student participation.
"I try to get the kids themselves involved as much as I can – present material so that I give them A and try to get them to see how to get to B," Donaher said. "But I don't want to tell them. I want them to figure it out."
One Greek class of his is so popular that there aren't enough seats for the 30-plus students who have enrolled, said Matt Aumiller, a fellow Latin teacher at BC High and a colleague of Donaher for eight years.
"All the students who come through, especially the students of alumni, their fathers or their uncles or even their grandfathers will say an education at BC High is not complete unless you've had Donaher for Latin or Greek," Aumiller said.
When Donaher first attended BC High as a student, he was the highest scorer of the nearly 2,000 students who took the school's entrance exam, resulting in a full, four-year scholarship.
After graduating, Donaher went on to receive a bachelor's degree from the College of the Holy Cross and, immediately after graduation, returned to his high school alma mater to teach.
"Coming back here was just pure chance," Donaher said. "But I got one year under my belt and decided that yeah, I'm making a lot of mistakes, and I really didn't know the teaching craft, but I wanted to stay."
Donaher holds Master's degrees from Boston College and Harvard College in classics and philology, respectively.
In 1962, Donaher co-founded BC High's Homeric Academy with former BC High teacher Jack Howard, in which the best Greek students at the school read Homer's Odyssey in its original language. To complete the course, students must recite passages of the epic in Greek and are given an oral test on the tome from nearby college classics professors.
When students finished their first round of reading the Odyssey, Donaher would throw a banquet in celebration – usually, he said, at his house. In his early years of teaching, while he was still single, his mother used to cook for the students; later on, he and his wife would.
He continued this tradition for about 10 years, until his children were born.
"As a result, we became not just student and teacher, we became very good friends," Donaher said. "Some of them attended my wedding, many of us are still close today, and a number of those guys will be here Saturday evening."
Donaher will be honored in a June 12 ceremony at the school where students and colleagues will pay tribute to his half century of dedication. The ceremony is at 6:30 p.m.
