‘On fire with excitement’: Tim Walz’s former students react to nomination

Imagine your teacher in the White House.

For Tim Walz’s former students, the hypothetical could become real. And they’re stoked.

The Minnesota governor and Democratic vice-presidential candidate was a teacher in Nebraska and Minnesota before he ran for Congress in 2006. His time in the classroom features heavily on the campaign trail and in his governing. He has approved laws that provide universal school meals and add more money for education.

He and his wife, Gwen, taught at Mankato West high school, in a town south-west of the Minneapolis area.

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There was high demand for his classes, said Jillian Hiscock, a former student at Mankato West. “It was hard to get into global geography. Who would have thought students would be fighting to get into global geography?

“If you want to talk about strict, you got to talk about Mrs Walz,” she added. “I don’t think Tim had a strict bone in his body.”

Mankato West alumni have convened in a Slack channel to share memories and excitement, finding community in the surreality of their former teacher potentially becoming vice-president. The alums usually bring up both Walzes as memorable and impactful educators who left impressions on them for different reasons.

Beyond his teaching duties, he was part of the football coaching staff and an adviser to student groups, including the school’s first gay-straight alliance – in the late 1990s, in a small town in the midwest – after a student worked to set up the chapter.

“It really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married,” Walz told the Star Tribune in 2018.

For Kamala Harris, the titles of teacher and coach played heavily into Walz’s potential as a running mate. The vice-president repeatedly called him “coach” during their first rally together.

Hiscock, 41, had Mrs Walz as a teacher and knew Mr Walz through his advising of a youth in government program and volunteering to plan prom. He was a fun-loving teacher who met students where they were, known to play a Jeopardy game in the classroom.

Walz was known to care about students, even those who weren’t in his classes, and knew about their interests, wishing them luck at their softball game or asking if they were ready for the choir concert, she said. He was named “most inspiring” teacher in the school yearbook one year.

Walz was passionate about teaching the underlying causes that can lead to atrocities like the Holocaust. One oft-cited story from 1993 shows how Walz taught students in Alliance, Nebraska, to study those factors and then identify which country could be at greatest risk of genocide. They landed on Rwanda, the New York Times reported in 2008, accurately predicting the country’s genocide before it happened.

Laura Muhm, 40, had Walz as a teacher in 11th grade in 2001. He encouraged free-flowing discussion and would toss the lesson plan if needed, she said. He worked to expose students to different cultures, inviting a student who was Muslim to share about their culture.

She was thrilled when Walz was chosen to be Harris’s running mate. “I felt like I drank five shots of espresso. That’s how energized I felt. Like, almost too energized,” Muhm said.

Mankato, the Minnesota town that Walzes claimed as home, is “just on fire right now with excitement. Everybody’s like, I know that guy,” Muhm said.

Hiscock owns a women’s sports bar in Minneapolis, A Bar of Their Own, and hosted a watch party to view Walz’s first rally as vice-president nominee. The bar was standing-room only as they served a tequila-based “blue wave” cocktail, and a non-alcoholic drink of Mountain Berry Blast Powerade. Walz himself does not drink after a 1995 drunk-driving arrest – he prefers Diet Mountain Dew.

She said she was talking to a reporter this week who noted how rare it was that so many people had such good things to say about their high school teacher – not always a well-liked constituency among teenagers.

“I’m not trying to be like Pollyanna with you. It just literally doesn’t surprise me that nobody has a bad story about him,” she said.