After 12 years of teaching here at WHHS, math and computer science teacher Dr. William Gordon is retiring. A veteran in teaching, Gordon taught for 15 years as a college professor before coming to WHHS.

Gordon, ever since he was little, knew what he wanted to be, and that was a teacher. 

“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher ever since I was a little kid. Then I taught college and ended up doing other stuff for a time, but I kept missing teaching to people who would be interested in it so I came back to teaching,” Gordon said.

He taught at many different schools, including Roxbury Community College, the State University of New York Albany, the State University of New York Buffalo, University of Pennsylvania, Bates College and Colby College. He taught standard math courses at all of these institutions. 

“Teaching in college is very different from teaching in high school because in college students are responsible for their own learning,” Gordon said. “If you are doing it right then you provide the students with the materials that they need so the students can learn what they need. You are available to explain the hard parts, the complicated parts, and to let them work on their own to help them. Ideally, your job is to facilitate their learning on their own and with the help of other people, and of course you. In high school, mostly the role of the teacher is to tell you what you need to learn, so in high school, the teacher is the dispenser of learning instead of the facilitator of learning.” 

After teaching at colleges and universities for 15 years, and doing other jobs, Gordon finally found that he wanted to teach at WHHS. His main reason was its amazing ethnically and financially diverse student population who came from many different neighborhoods. What he loves about this diverse student body is seeing their experiences with interacting with one another, making friends and working together. 

“Dr. Gordon’s personality is a little nerdy, a little quirky, but very well-intentioned and good-hearted,” Erin Kenney-Levin, a co-worker of Dr. Gordon who has taught computer science classes with him and has known him and been friends with him for over 10 years, said. 

Some of the things that Gordon likes according to Kenney-Levin are baking bread, gardening, hanging out with friends and going to the symphony.

“He will do anything for anybody, he will write ten million letters of recommendation for his students every year, and those letters of recommendation have to be good letters of recommendation because he has kids that are going to Yale and Harvard and getting into really tough programs, so his recommendations need to be so detailed,” Kenney-Levin said. “He spends hours, hours and hours writing those recommendations for his students, the time and energy he puts into the daily operations of teaching is unbelievable.” 

Another example of Gordon’s kindness is when, during online school last year, he and Kenney-Levin combined their AP classes together for a month and a half before AP exams so that both were as ready as they could be. 

“He cared as much about my students as he did about his students,” Kenney-Levin said. 

Gordon’s favorite part of teaching is when he has bright students that come into his class and end up getting interested in what he is teaching and end up doing more work in those areas. Gordon also loves it when students who might have had bad experiences or learned in bad ways come to his class and with help from him, see that the subject they are learning from him is interesting and get over their negative feelings toward the subject. 

“I will miss the students, I will miss the interactions that I have with a lot of the faculty members who have become friends over the years, I will miss the excitement of coming into school everyday wondering how today is going to be, and the annoyance of leaving everything knowing I’ve messed up in all those things and I have to figure out how to fix that for tomorrow,” Gordon said.

Some of the many teachers that have become friends with Gordon over the years include Peter Stefanou and Emma Massie who have supported him ever since his first year, Kenney-Levin who has been working closely with Dr. Gordon for the past two years, Ferd Schneider who’s been working with Dr. Gordon forever, Jennifer Fay whom Dr. Gordon has known long before WHHS because their kids went to the same elementary school, along with many teachers in the science department.

Dr. Gordon’s time at WHHS has impacted many teachers and students, including himself. 

“It’s given me a much greater understanding of how people develop during the ages 12 and 18, and I’ve seen the way people grow and that’s been really inspirational for me,” Gordon said.