John’s Interview with Former Student Matthew LaPlante (AHS c/o 1996)

5 March 2024

(Description of this episode of the “Undisciplined” show on Utah Public Radio website):

Utah Public Radio. March 2024  – The teens and young adults who comprise Generation Z are less likely to drink, use drugs, or get pregnant before they are ready to do so. They’re less likely to live in poverty and they live in a world of far less violent crime relative to the generation before them. So, why are so many of them struggling? Educator John Creger thinks he has part of the answer: They often need help understanding who they are in this world. 

John remembers Matt LaPlante as an original, a natural trailblazer even as a high school sophomore, who trusted his own intuitions more than following established procedures. Nearly 30 years later, Dr. LaPlante has recently been named Associate Professor of Journalism at Utah State University. Matthew has built a career reporting on crises like the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia and gang violence in Central America. He balances this often grim work with more optimistic science reporting and his Public Radio show “Undisciplined.” Matthew and John (his sophomore English teacher) reconnect in this episode.

The energy of this reconnection carries through the entire episode with Matthew and John delighting in their conversation. At one point as John is describing how his own high school experience had tried to fill him with knowledge that disregarded his natural curiosity about questions of meaning and purpose, Matt mentions the following passage from Walt Whitman’s preface to his classic collection of poetry, Leaves of Grass:

Re-examine all you have been told
in school or church or in any book,
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul

In fact, John had come upon this exact passage some years before, and had used it in several presentations to introduce participants to the spirit of the Personal Creed Project. This was just one of the surprising moments of unscripted connection in this wonderful 25 minute conversation.