James Nebeker, at age 25, describes himself as "young, idealistic and naive." With confidence still in the bloom of youth, he sees his road ahead as helping reform American education.
For now, he is in the classroom, not in an ivory tower formulating educational models. "This is where it's at - the classroom," he says.Eleven-year-old Andy Quinn, one of Nebeker's 17 fifth-grade students at the private Waterford School in Sandy, doesn't define his teacher by life goals.
"He's a good guy. He's a good teacher, and I like him a lot," says Andy, who relished Nebeker's lessons on the Civil and Revolutionary wars.
Friend and classmate Daniel Swinton agrees. "He's a nice person who helps you when you need help. You can even call him at night, if you need help with your homework."
Martha Quinn, Andy's mother, calls Nebeker "a gentle man and a great role model for my son. He's not the rah-rah coach or a stern, male teacher type. He teaches so that Andy understands and asks questions rather than just throwing out dates and rote facts."
"He comes at things from an unusual yet stimulating viewpoint," adds Daniel's mom, Heidi Swinton.
She was intrigued by one class writing assignment. Nebeker told his charges to assume they were an inanimate object and describe how they felt. Daniel became a letter and his essay explained the letter's feelings from being written, to having its stamp canceled, to being ripped open.
When asked what makes Nebeker special or a good teacher, nobody mentions the obvious - Nebeker is in a wheelchair. It isn't a taboo subject; it just doesn't define the man. As says the Little Prince, the hero of the book that Nebeker is having his fifth-graders read, "What is essential is invisible to the eye."
"I'm not a teacher with a handicap; I'm a teacher who just happens to be in wheelchair. This whole wheelchair business is not a big deal. I think that if someone gets a little notoriety, it should be because he did something outstanding, not because he happens to be in a wheelchair. My brain is working, and that's what it takes to succeed," he says.
Nebeker doesn't ignore his handicap; he accepts it and comfortably answers the questions of his curious students. At the beginning of this school year, he read them a college essay that eloquently detailed his motorcycle accident and his efforts, psychologically and physically, to adapt to his wheelchair.
But while the consequences of his accident are only an aside to his teaching, the accident itself is central to why he became a teacher.
An East High School student who excelled in math, Nebeker saw his future in engineering, like his father. His father owns a local high-tech engineering firm that makes high-speed cameras, and the junior Nebeker's future, professionally as well as financially, was set - for life - if he chose engineering.
That was his path when he entered prestigious Northwestern University.
"I never had a secret desire to become a teacher," he admits.
But that changed because of what happened at 11 a.m. July 11, 1986. He lost control of a motorcycle he had taken on a test drive. He does not remember the accident or anything that happened after going to sleep the night before. He is grateful he was wearing a helmet.
When he returned to Northwestern more than a year later, engineering had lost its appeal. He found it too narrow. With its lock-step sequence of classes, the engineering major would have no room for classes in writing, economics and Buddhism.
The accident left its mark in another way. At an age younger than most, Nebeker comprehended a life truism often lost on the young - life is fragile.
"I knew I didn't want to spend my life behind a desk trying to design things. That was a horrifying thought. Here I was still alive, and I decided that if I was to work hard at something, then it had to be something where I made an impact," he says.
Nebeker chose teaching.
"I was attracted to teaching because I saw how much of a mess education is in in this country."
He wants to make a national impact, perhaps pulling the best factors from the European and Japanese models ("we can't transplant them but we can learn from them") and giving them to American schools.
But, before he sets out to reform anything, he decided to go about the business of rubbing off a little of his greenness by working in the classroom.
Why then, did a young, idealistic teacher bent on reform take his teaching talents to a private school in his home state instead of staying in Chicago or moving New York?
"I wondered if, in public schools, I'd be stifled. I wondered if I'd be viewed as a maverick," said Nebeker, who recently spent his spring break observing in public school classrooms.
While at Northwestern, Nebeker worked in Chicago's inner-city schools as part of his teaching experience. Now, at the private Waterford, he's found a program that he views as having the potential of benefiting at-risk students like those he saw in Chicago.
Waterford uses computers to emphasize individual learning. With financial help from corporate donors, Waterford established a cooperative partnership with several public schools in the Bronx, New York, to help at-risk students learn using the computer. Waterford sends its staff to New York to train the Bronx teachers how to use computers in their classrooms.
"The computer speeds up learning. It's more exposure. Sometimes, when I'm in here (computer lab), I can feel the mind activity," he says.
While he dreams of the enormous potential and works toward the elusive ideal, Nebeker, for now, is content to work on a smaller scale, exploring ways to open up the world of learning for one roomful of 10- and 11-year-olds.