#MagnumOpus
The Accidental Teacher
“O the joy of my spirit – it is uncaged – it darts like lightning! It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time, I will have thousands of globes and all time.” from A Song of Joys, Walt Whitman
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here was a time in veteran English teacher Eric Franklin’s life when traveling the globe, and even living abroad, was what he envisioned as his Magnum Opus. A double-major in International Relations and German at the University of Washington, he dreamed of working in the Foreign Service. While finishing his bachelor’s degree studying abroad in Germany, Franklin, “for fun,” decided to add some English literature classes to his course load. As fate would have it, that decision changed his career path; and, although becoming a teacher was “accidental,” it, ironically, has opened up a whole new world. Following college graduation, and with a newfound love for English literature, Franklin was encouraged by a friend to apply to the Master’s program at Loyola Marymount University. While working on his advanced degree in English, he began teaching literature and writing courses at LMU and found that he enjoyed what he was doing. “I liked the interaction with the students,” Franklin recalls. “It was rewarding knowing that I was helping [them] reach their goals.” After finishing his Master’s, Franklin began teaching at Alemany High School in Mission Hills. Although he loved teaching, something was missing in his life – or so he thought. With that, he found himself back at the University of Washington, enrolled in a Ph. D program in German. “I missed the [German] language,” explains Franklin, “but I started to become a little bored with the [German] literature.” So, instead of continuing in the doctorate program, Franklin took the test to finish his Master’s in German and headed back to southern California, ready to return to teaching. When Franklin arrived at Bishop Montgomery in the fall of 2003, he did so with a clear purpose in mind. While teaching at the university level, one common characteristic among the freshmen was that they were not as well prepared for college as they should have been; admittedly, neither was he when he arrived at Washington years earlier. He decided to change that. “I told myself that if I taught at the high school level again, I would do whatever I could to make sure my students were prepared,” explains Franklin. Turns out, Bishop was the perfect place for Franklin to land.
Honors English and senior AP Literature & Composition students were some of the brightest on campus, but it was much simpler than that: “There is just a really good rapport between the faculty and the students here [at Bishop],” he explains. “There is an energy here that I like. I have students, every day, who say ‘thank you’ when they leave class. I had never experienced that before.” It is this relationship, according to Franklin, that makes for a fertile learning environment. “The great thing about Bishop is that it is a calm, peaceful environment where students can learn.” In his eleven years at Bishop, Franklin has done his best to continue to nurture the school’s “peaceful” environment in his own classroom. It is, perhaps, one of the reasons why his students have seen incredible success both at Bishop and in college. “[Eric] is the teacher at Bishop Montgomery who consistently receives letters from major universities in which students cite him as the teacher who made the greatest impact on their lives and their academic growth,” says BMHS principal Rosemary Libbon. “The collection in his personnel file is impressive.” Asked what else he attributes to his teaching success and Franklin points to the fact that he challenges his students to meet and exceed their expectations. He also strives to teach them to think for themselves. “My philosophy,” explains Franklin, “is to teach my students how to learn so that they can approach the world [from] whatever perspective they want… so they can figure it out for themselves.” Both his successes and the successes of his students are certainly not lost on Libbon: “Eric is not only an excellent teacher-- and that is vastly understating his talent and his value to Bishop Montgomery-- he is also a man of exceptional character. He inspires his Advanced Placement and Honors students to expect excellence from him and to achieve excellence themselves. He is a fascinating, talented, and demanding teacher,” she shares. “I have been a principal for twenty years [and] there is no doubt that Eric Franklin is in the top 1%, if not 0.5%, of the teachers I have hired, worked with, and supervised. He makes Bishop Montgomery a better place. He makes me a better principal.”
From the outset, Franklin realized that Bishop Montgomery was different than any other school at which he had taught. Sure, his freshman
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