Math teacher awarded license by acclaim

Henryk Gurman, burdened with a cruel past, is a walking story. The horror of his deportation as a teenage boy from his home in Poland to a slave labor camp in Russia still echoes in his 84 years.

But on Monday he wanted to talk about mathematics, not history. He wanted to talk about promising minds of the future rather than demented minds of the past.

"What I usually tell young people is that my generation provided people like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and I want your generation to be more human than mine," he said Monday after receiving an honorary Minnesota teaching license in a special ceremony in Woodbury.

It's through mathematics that he teaches his students critical thinking skills that he hopes will guide them. He's taught for years as a substitute and tutors for free after school, reserving a table in the library with a "Math Help Here" sign.

"His life is a testament to teaching and to love for children," Alice Seagren, the state education commissioner, told about 60 people assembled at Stonecrest senior apartments, where Gurman lives with his wife, June.

Gurman is only the second Minnesotan to be awarded such a license, Seagren said.

"No matter what age you are you can continue to follow your dream," she said of Gurman, who wanted to be a math teacher before secret police locked his Jewish family in a boxcar and hauled them to a gulag deep inside Russia.

That boy with dreams was evident Monday when Gurman, a blood-red handkerchief tucked in the breast pocket of his distinguished gray suit, spoke of how mathematics gives students the power to solve world problems.

And then he told of his early attempt to teach math 45 years ago, when he heard his daughter Linda leaving out five when she counted to 10. "What about five?" he asked, and then told her to count again. And so she did:

"One, two, three, four, what about five, six ..."

Gurman spent a long career as an accountant and studied at Century College and St. Thomas and Hamline universities. He credits his Polish fifth- and sixth-grade teacher -- who he thinks perished in the Holocaust -- with teaching him to love mathematics.

"Good teachers usually succeed in arousing interest in certain subjects and that was the case with me," he said after the ceremony.

Doug Johnson, who retired from teaching world history and social sciences at Woodbury High in 2006, said that Gurman's intellectual curiosity ranges well beyond mathematics and that by personal example he helps students put their problems into a worldwide perspective.

"He just brings a great story," Johnson said. "The kids love it."

Gurman, whose students call him Grandpa Henry, doesn't anticipate completing three remaining tests to qualify for a permanent teaching license because he's caring for his wife, who is recovering from surgery. But Seagren said that the honorary license is rare recognition of his capabilities, and his life accomplishments make the permanent license hardly more than a technicality.

"They love him because he's such a great teacher," she said after the ceremony. "I don't think anyone's going to quibble too much."

Kevin Giles • 651-298-1554