Updated August 09, 2024 at 09:29 AM ET
For most Americans, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s campaign debut with Vice President Harris this week is an introduction. For his former students, it’s the culmination of a rise they’ve been relishing for years.
Before landing on Harris’s radar, Walz was a global studies teacher and assistant football coach at Mankato West High School in the 1990s and early 2000s. Mr. Walz ended his teaching career when he won a seat in Congress in 2006, but Walz’s students still remember him fondly to this day.
At a rally in Wisconsin on Wednesday, Walz in turn credited his students for his rise in politics.
"It was my students who encouraged me to run for office. I never thought that much about it," Walz said. "But they saw in me what I was hoping to instill in them — this idea of a commitment to a better world, a common good. A belief that one single person can actually make a difference."
NPR spoke with some of Walz's former students to get a closer look into his character and those lessons he tried to pass on.
The students were downright giddy about the possibility that their former teacher could be the vice president. Their text chains lit up with old pictures and stories about Walz. One described it as surreal. Another marveled at what a normal guy he still is. Another said he was glad America was finally getting to know the man who was so important to them.
From the classroom and the football field
Students say Walz taught his global studies class in a way that got everyone involved in the conversation — and pushed them to expand their horizons.
Noah Hobbs, one former global studies student, says he was a C student and could have easily slipped through the cracks. But Walz took an interest in him, and the enthusiasm motivated Hobbs to learn.
"Leaving his class, going to the next one, it was really hard to not want to continue to learn," Hobbs told NPR. "Because it was like this sugar high that just doesn’t stop."
Walz was known for drinking diet Mountain Dew, and former student Will Handke fondly tells the story of watching Mr. Walz down a bag of Oreos on a late night train ride during a field trip to China.
"I heard some crunching and munching and looked out over the side and saw Walz’s hand zipping into the bag of Oreos as fast as I possibly have seen any hand move,” Handke told NPR. “And that bag of Oreos disappeared very quickly."
The story is so legendary his twin brother told NPR the same anecdote with slightly different details.
Sam Hurd said he was attracted to Walz's class because he heard it was heavy on discussion and light on homework. The lesson he ultimately took away from Walz was less about geography and more about the value of public service and the importance of everyone finding a way to contribute to the greater good. Hurd ultimately became a teacher himself, teaching English for speakers of other languages in Baltimore.
Hurd was so pumped to see Walz picked as Harris' running mate that he and another former Walz student dropped everything to drive up to Philadelphia Tuesday to watch Mr. Walz at the Pennsylvania rally, a full-circle moment.
"There’s still very much like a 'Mr. Walz goes to Washington' feeling about all of it, even though he has been doing that for, you know, 15 or 20 years," Hurd said from the passenger seat.
By the time Hurd and his friend got to the rally, the arena was full, and after waiting in a 2 hour line, they ended up in an overflow room. When they told people they were Walz’s students, they were suddenly very popular.
Mitch Salsbery was a freshman on the varsity football team Walz helped coach them to win the Minnesota state championship.
That state championship featured in an early Walz campaign ad and is now something Harris emphasizes when talking about her running mate, calling him "Coach."
But for Salsbery, it is the way Walz coached that has stuck with him.
"Mr. Walz brought passion every day. He loved to coach. He loved to teach," Salsbery told NPR.
Salsbery said it wasn’t the sort of fake energy he saw from a lot of other coaches in his years playing high school and college football. He said Walz had a way of holding every player to a high standard, to play to the best of their potential, whether they were a mediocre backup or a future all star.
"Football — if you don’t do your job, there’s literally a hole there for them to run the ball through. Tim, he just had a way of not making you feel bad but making you want to do better," he said.
To the campaign stage
Handke, like many of Walz’s students, ended up volunteering on his first campaign, working as an unpaid intern on Walz’s bid for Congress in 2006, making calls, knocking doors, and helping out at parades.
"He doesn’t let any hand get unshaken," Handke said. "Walz would run back and forth, back and forth, shaking hands. This man does not stop."
Walz would be drenched in sweat and still going.
Kristina Rothenberg was a student the last year Walz taught. Rothenberg describes him as always smiling in the halls, someone who listened, who wanted to make people’s lives better.
Her senior year after Walz had been elected, a group of students went on a field trip to Washington, D.C.
"One year you have him as a teacher. The next year you go see his office in D.C. It’s pretty amazing," Rothenberg said.
Rothenberg added that Mr. Walz went out of his way to get her and a friend a tour of the White House.
"He had to walk to the White House, show his 'I’m a congressman' badge so that we could do the tour. And then he went back to his job of being a congressman," Rothenberg said. "I still think he’d do that today, by the way."
Rothenberg went on to volunteer for his 2008 reelection campaign as his parade director, which meant organizing other volunteers and walking with him in many a sweaty, small-town parade.
"The way he could rally people at a parade was just something I'll never forget. He joined in all the cheers and chants," Rothenberg said. "And this was before you had a step counter, but he must have put miles on the parade routes when he was there."
She said it was one of the best summers of her life.
Walz returned to speak to the AP Government class Hobbs was taking a couple of years after leaving the classroom for Congress. Hobbs was late to the class — and Walz greeted him at the door saying, "Some things never change."
"I wasn’t a bad enough student that I should be remembered. I also was not a good enough student that I should be remembered," Hobbs said. "But two years removed [from] being my teacher, and remembering that I was habitually tardy to his class and every other class .. that is pretty incredible."
Years later, Hobbs ended up running for office himself, wrapping up six years on the Duluth Minnesota City Council. Hobbs said Walz showed him that you don’t have to go to an Ivy League school or come from money to get into politics and make a difference.
Copyright 2024 NPR
