Mark Gorey is an English teacher at Boothbay Region High School and has been teaching there for 19 years.

Originally from Virginia, Gorey earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Dartmouth College, his master’s in English from the University of Maine in Orono, and studied American literature for a year at the University of North Carolina. Having lived all around, Gorey remarked on the differences between urban and Maine life.

“I’ve lived in several very large metro areas before. New York, Boston, etcetera. I’ve ridden subway trains on a daily basis going back and forth to work at a corporation. I love visiting cities and all the culture that they have, but Boothbay Harbor is a fantastic place for the mind to kind of introspectively think about what’s going on.”

With an ever-growing roster of writers, famous and low-key alike, Maine seems to be a destination for the literary word. “I think that, for many reasons, a lot of writers and artists choose a place like Maine,” said Gorey. “For me, there’s something ever-refreshing about the landscape and quality of life that I find (makes) it hard to live in a huge city. I appreciate Maine, I appreciate Maine’s hospitality. There’s a strong community, here, that’s difficult to find in a larger urban area and there’s an appreciation for the natural world.”

In the fashion of a truly devoted teacher, when asked about his favorite part of teaching at BRHS, Gorey responded, without hesitation, “The students.”

“Making a connection with students shows me that this is a resource that can’t be outsourced, it’s seeing the light bulb go on ... giving a reason for face to face teaching. They’re enthusiastic, they’re bright, they’re curious, they’re eager, they’re ambitious. They’re all of the above. They require me to bring my ‘A’ game and that’s good.”

One thing Gorey said he would like his students to remember about his classes 10 to 20 years down the road is that he really tries to guide independent thinking and learning. “I would want them to know that I cared about helping them, that I was not someone trying to inculcate a particular ideology. I would want them to remember me as somebody who facilitated their ability to intelligently sort through the barrage of info we are faced with on a daily basis so that they can empower themselves.”

Gorey has already seen a little bit of that. “I’ve had students tell me that the debate projects had an effect on them. I might see a student in an aisle at Hannaford six years after he or she graduated and they’ll say ‘Well, I never thought about politics as being important until I took your debate project and since high school I’ve realized how important it is to be informed.’”

“That kind of feedback,” said Gorey, snapping his fingers, “is what it’s about.”

When asked what his students might find surprising about him, he said, “Well, there is a 360-page piece of something that’s in the works. There are stacks of iterations and reiterations sitting on my shelf at home.”

He said he would want his students to know “that all of the works that show up on teachers’ shelves were originally scrawled out by hand, potentially in a journal notebook. People did this work, it was hard, and they scratched through a lot of it and I’m involved in that process too.

“I consider myself an amateur in the best sense of the word — just a lover of the word and language,” said Gorey, tapping his fingers on the desk. “That’s the person that they see in front of them day-to-day no matter how my clothes don’t change — there is that kind of curious tinkerer within. It’s been there since I created my first collection of poems in the seventh grade. I’m still that tinkerer, I’m still that person experimenting with language.”

Gorey’s favorite book “at the moment” is Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” “(Atwood’s) forward thinking about our culture is chilling and provocative and relevant. But I would have to say that William Faulkner’s language just doesn’t get old for me. It probably has something to do with coming up in the South.”

Two more books making Gorey’s favorites” list iare “Manufacturing Consent” by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, a book he’s included in his AP Language class for two years; and “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. “A couple students have said that reading ‘Manufacturing Consent’ has changed the way they look at things,” said Gorey. “And it can, it’s that empowering.”

“As a father, McCarthy’s ‘The Road’ struck me. I could only read three or four pages at a time and then I would have to put it down. McCarthy found a narrative and a language, there, that was just overwhelming.”

Gorey said one thing that troubles him deeply is a lack of reading among young people. “The idea of sitting somewhere for several hours and just occupying one’s imagination with the world that an author has constructed – thatkind of time and space is disappearing.”

When asked what the solution is, Gorey said he truly did not know. “But it just takes one book. That’s what I tell some of my students — ‘If I haven’t given you that one book, I’m hoping you’re going to find it.’”

What would Gorey like to have for a superhuman ability?  “I’d like to find a way for people to be able to disagree, but still be respectful and create positive change. I’ve never seen it so divisive as we are now. Is there a way to re-achieve civility locally, nationally, etcetera? That would be a great place to start, if we could just find a way to hear each other, not shriek at each other.

“What I go back to is just going forward, wanting to work with students in terms of getting rid of assumptions, focusing on facts, sorting through the so called ‘fake news,’ having strong opinions and building strong arguments based on fact. That’s what I want. That’s what I want to stand for.”