I heard many scary stories about Monsieur Gurulé before my first class with him. He was strict, he gave a lot of homework, he was a hard grader—and scariest of all, he was crazy. Everything I had heard was true. Monsieur Gurulé was truly a great teacher.
Throughout our lives, most of us will be taught by many good teachers and a few bad ones. The good ones we appreciate because they teach us something useful or relevant. Bad teachers frustrate us; we feel we wasted our time and didn't learn a thing. Rarely, we will experience a great teacher. Such a teacher's lessons may not turn out exactly as planned, but he changes your view of the world, or she opens your eyes to new thoughts, ideas, and possibilities.
Two years ago, I had this kind of rare luck. As part of my high school's college-prep curriculum, I was encouraged to take two years of foreign language. After some consideration, I settled on French, and Monsieur Gurulé stepped into my life.
First Things First: A Place to Learn
A great teacher must be knowledgeable, organized, and have control of the situation. As a native of Montréal, Québec, Monsieur Gurulé certainly had command of the French language and its structure. It was his native language, and he had a master's degree in French from the University of Notre Dame. Monsieur Gurulé also took organization and control to a whole new level. Handouts were stored neatly on the shelves behind our whiteboards, reference materials were alphabetically organized on a shelf, and homework was carefully stacked on the righthand corner of his desk. Everything had a place, and everything was in its place at all times. There was no such thing as missing homework or papers. It was students' responsibility to make sure their work was in the right place; if it wasn't, they were held accountable and it affected their grade.
Disrespect or rudeness was never tolerated in his classroom. If a student was disrespectful in any way, he or she was immediately sent to the office or given detention. Monsieur Gurulé's classroom was a place to learn. Either you followed the rules, or you were gone. Such policies were a little intimidating at first, but after you understood them, you realized that this is what made this French class hum like a well-oiled machine.
The Gift of Weird Teaching
Great teachers think of ways to engage students by immersing them in the subject matter and making the content fun—or at least easier—to learn. They can even fascinate high school students, most of whom have a limited attention span, when teaching dry or technical subject matter that requires a lot of memorization—as is true at times of teaching a language. Monsieur Gurulé had this gift.
In learning French, it's not difficult to learn most of the words and decipher the sentence structure. It's the pronunciations that kill us. Monsieur Gurulé used some very unconventional methods for teaching us to pronounce French words correctly. His oddest technique was to literally meow (or, as the French spell it, "miaou") at the class, just like a cat. He would miaou, and we would miaou back at him. We performed this exercise over and over every day, trying to perfect our responses. After I had known Monsieur Gurulé for a while, I asked him why he had us do this. He explained that it was a psychological technique. If he could teach us to say miaou exactly as he did, we would be able to pronounce French words exactly as he did.
Walking down the hall between classes, a student might hear a miaou behind her. She would know who it was and what she had to do: miaou right back at Monsieur Gurulé, of course. Many kids were embarrassed and thought he was crazy for doing that, but not me. It made me laugh, and I tried hard to mimic him because when I succeeded, he was so happy and proud.
This unique teacher used many other interesting techniques. We wrote dialogues and stories in French, often based on his quaint little set of stuffed animals—all of whom had names—or his imaginary alien twins: Grisot and Arisot. Students often had to speak French to his pen and pencil set, Marcel and Francois, or say bonjour and au revoir to the plants outside. French was the only language spoken in Monsieur Gurulé's classroom. This scared the heck out of many students, but to me it was a challenge. And there was a method to his madness. Kids thought his methods were weird—but our French improved greatly.
And the Gift of Culture
Monsieur Gurulé didn't want his students to just learn the language; he wanted them to understand and embrace French culture. He mainly acquainted us with this culture through our high school French club. He enthusiastically took us on a photo tour of the various regions of France and discussed his travels throughout the country, the sights he saw, and the people he met. Students in the club took up the challenge to cook and bake complicated French recipes (Monsieur Gurulé adored rich French food, particularly the desserts), and we took field trips to French restaurants.
The stories he told of French and Canadian history made me appreciate these cultures, but his enthusiasm did not stop at stories and recipes. Each year, Monsieur Gurulé sponsored two international trips for French students, one to Montréal and one to Paris. I was fortunate enough to go on the class trip to Montréal. The whole trip was perfectly choreographed from our plane flights to our hotel, food arrangements, and sight-seeing. Monsieur Gurulé reveled in showing us his hometown—museums, cathedrals, art galleries, and historical sights.
I couldn't understand my teacher's excitement for a city he knew so well, a language he had spoken for decades, and a student trip he had led for 10 consecutive years. But I will never forget how infectious his enthusiasm was.
That enthusiasm was part of Monsieur Gurulé's character. So those who knew him well noticed when he began to look tired in the spring of 2012. People commented that he had lost a lot of weight. I too thought he seemed a little off—not his usual high-energy self—but I wasn't worried. He rarely missed a day of work and still came to all of our club functions. I thought he would soon be back to his old self. What I didn't know, because he didn't tell me until a year later, was that in April he had been diagnosed with liver cancer.
Au Revoir
The following academic year—my last year at the high school—Monsieur Gurulé continued to be a mentor to me as well as my teacher. I would stop in to see him during lunch, and we would talk and laugh. He gave me insight about myself and told me not to worry so much. He also helped me to understand others and look at things from their point of view.
I talked to Monsieur Gurulé about my plans to attend the University of Arizona and major in speech-language pathology with a minor in French. He was always thoughtful and deliberate in his comments about my plans, but he was never judgmental. I now realize that during this last year as his student, I never fully grasped how bad his health was becoming.
In the weeks before he passed away, Monsieur Gurulé took time to call or write letters to many of his family and friends. He doled out words of encouragement and updates on his condition. I was lucky enough to receive one of those calls. He sounded weak and worn down—he had just stopped driving and realized he would have to give up his job—but I sensed that he wanted to talk for a while. He asked how my French class was going and seemed genuinely interested in how I was surviving in college. We made plans to meet when I came home for Christmas break. I was excited at the thought of seeing him again. As always, he ended our conversation with a miaou, and I mimicked his miaou right back.
That was the last time I spoke to Monsieur Sid Gurulé. That November, he passed away after a hard-fought battle with cancer. Even now, I can't believe Monsieur Gurulé—such a big part of my high school memories—is gone. I had dreamed of visiting him after I graduated from college with a minor in French linguistics, and telling him—in perfect French—how much he had influenced me and changed my life. Monsieur Gurulé wasn't just an incredible French teacher; he was an incredible mentor and friend.
