"He Changed My Life"

7/26/2021

They were interns, fresh out of college and green as they could be.

Teaching and coaching called loudly to them, but they had miles to travel and many, many lessons to learn along the way.

They had a mentor, though, in John Coates, the consummate pro, master of his craft, and the quintessential guide on the side.

A St. Christopher’s alumnus who earned baccalaureate and graduate degrees in English from Arizona State, John served Collegiate as an 8th grade English and history teacher from 1984 until his retirement in 2015.

Each day, he challenged his students to bring their very best and held himself to that same lofty standard in both scholarship and actions.

For most of his life, John was afflicted with a debilitating neurological disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth Syndrome, and when his mobility reached the point that he needed assistance, interns came on board to help him with routine tasks and also to learn. He taught them well, for when their tenures concluded, most moved to full-time teaching positions at Collegiate.

When John passed away April 22 at 74, three of them – Nathan Goodwyn, Jeff Dunnington, and Matthew Richardson – were continuing his legacy along the very halls where they witnessed his strength and absorbed his wisdom. What follows are their thoughts and reflections about the impact John made on their personal and professional lives.

Nathan Goodwyn (intern from 2002-2005)

Speak about John’s influence.

It’s hard for me to overstate the impression that John made on my life, not just as a teacher but as a person coming out of college when you think you know more than you actually do. At that point in my life, I was moonlighting as a musician. That was picking up and really exciting, and I was very uncertain that teaching was what I was going to do ultimately. John more than anybody else was responsible for changing that. John helped me understand how much joy one could get out of working with kids every day.

Were there memorable moments?

Yes. The first would be how he dealt with the confused adolescent. One of his go-to maxims was, “Confusion is your friend.” I felt like he was speaking to them, but he was also speaking to me. Embracing confusion is part of that process when you’re sorting through being in your 20’s.

Another was never to laugh at a kid. I had a situation with a student when I was maybe 23 and in my second year. I was working with him on an essay. John was nearby. The kid said something in an essay that made me laugh, and John kind of jumped me and said, “Never laugh at a kid.” He felt that I was out of line and wasn’t really valuing the kid in that interaction.

I remember coaching JV baseball several years ago when John was in the hospital. The team was 1-6 at the time. I was scrambling trying to figure how we were going to turn the season around. I thought we needed a day away from the field so we went down to the hospital to visit John. I hoped he could impart some words of wisdom.

When the team gathered around his bed, he said two things I’ll never forget. The first was, “It’s never as bad as you think it is.” The second was, “Stick with your program,” which from a coaching standpoint was validating to hear. I felt like we were working really hard and there weren’t a ton of changes we needed to implement. We just needed to stay the course. To hear him say that was really reassuring. I think we won nine of our last 10 after that. I don’t know if it was all because of that one visit, but it settled us, redirected our focus, and helped us understand that we could get the season turned around.

Anything else?

There was always an underlying sense of humor in everything John did. There was so much laughter. Most of it was John laughing at himself. He would try to sing. He fashioned himself as some sort of Pat Boone-type crooner. He would come into the classroom with kids there or not, warbling some tune, and gesturing with his hands. It was comical. You have to have levity in a classroom with Middle School kids. Everybody thought of him as this really demanding teacher, which he was. There was a level of expertise there that the kids really respected, but there was also just a ton of laughter. That’s what made it sustainable over the course of an entire school year with a room full of 13- and 14-year-old kids.

Is it safe to say that his voice still plays in your head?

No question. I’ve saved five or six of his voice mails. I find his voice in my head when I’m dealing with any kind of touchy situation. A student is upset about a grade or a student doesn’t understand something that he’s read or is dealing with some sort of social issue. When I’m in those situations, I find myself trying to speak with his voice, as creepy as that might sound, because I saw him do that at such a high level so many times.

John’s “bedside manner” with kids in these one-on-one situations was really striking. Just his sense of wisdom and truth telling. He’s not going to try to work around the truth. He’s going right to the heart of the issue in a way that’s pretty unvarnished but supportive. As a teacher and coach, it’s been really valuable to have that voice in my head. He changed my life, bottom line.

Jeff Dunnington (2007-2009)

Speak about John’s influence.

He certainly set the path for my career and set the foundation for who I became as a teacher. Working with John, I was pretty fresh to the education world. The biggest thing I learned from him and saw him do every day was constantly make connections with students, colleagues, and really anybody he could talk to. He was always fully engaged in the conversation which is something that’s pretty lost on a lot of people in this day and age. If he was talking to somebody, he could dive into who they were and what they were interested in very quickly.

Frequently, he talked about his family. Frequently, it was about sports or something he’d just read in The New York Times. Regardless, he was always imparting knowledge and wisdom. I don’t know if I ever contributed to those conversations, but I was soaking it in, constantly learning from him. I probably learned more about writing in my two years working with him than anywhere in my educational journey, and that includes graduate school. Those two years, I learned a lot about organizing a paper and how to put an essay together.

Speak about his perseverance.

It was something you couldn’t miss. No matter what, every single day John would come in in complete discomfort. Very rarely would he ever mention it. Some days were rougher than others when he would spend more time reclining and relaxing. On a regular basis, he’d come in, and you might hear a groan out of him, but the second the bell rang and the students walked in the room, he was in his happy place. He certainly never complained to them, ever.

Matthew Richardson (2013-2014)

Speak about working with John in the twilight of his career.

Even though the lesson plan varied sometimes class to class, minute to minute, what he always wanted to do was get people to think, whether it was in that moment or taking something with them. One of the things he’d say all the time was, “Are you writing this down?” or “Are you taking notes?” or “Are you getting this”? On the surface, that can be seen as a very simple, to-do task. What he was really trying to get kids to do was write something down, then think about it, and come back from a place of reflection and ask questions and grow from there.

He was great at making me think. When you worked with him, you had to be on your toes because things could change at any minute, which is one of the most endearing things about him. He was flexible and creative and moved with what kids needed. He had a lot of information in his mind that he imparted.

Speak about John’s toughness, resilience, and resolve.

John never saw himself as being handicapped. He wanted to do everything that everybody else was doing. When the disease started to take its toll, it frustrated him, but it never stopped him from wanting to do or thinking he could do or expecting he could do everything that every other teacher was doing. Then he’d do even more, whether it was taking time to make a phone call or giving someone a pep talk or stopping someone in the hall to talk. He did that all the time.

It would have been easy for him to put his head down and move through his day doing the bare minimum, but that wasn’t what John did. He always put people first. The most important person to him was the one in his classroom, the person working with him, the person in the hall who needed his attention.

Ongoing lessons?

You realized in John that you had a true friend, someone who really cared about you in the context of the whole person. He made a great impact on people’s lives by doing the little things that build relationships. He was very good at that. He challenged himself as hard or harder than he challenged the people around him. With John, there was always an expectation for excellence.
~Weldon Bradshaw

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