Remembering Señor
Truly one of a kind
Last week I learned of the passing of a beloved teacher.
Kerry A. Miller, known by his students as “Señor Miller” or simply “Señor,” passed away on May 11, 2025. He was 77-years-old.
When I arrived at Snider High School in August 2005, I didn’t know much about anything, and I knew even less about myself. But what I did know was that I was good at Spanish, and I looked forward to high school Spanish classes.
I was a pretty good student in school, earning an above-average GPA outside of my math classes, but I was almost never the best student in any class…except for maybe Spanish with Señor. I know this because he kept track of puntos and negativos on the board and I always tried to rack up the most puntos.
I can’t recall if Señor was my teacher in my freshman year, my sophomore year, or both, but I know I had him at least once in one of those years. His reputation preceded him. I remember hearing about him as early as middle school. My cousins attended Snider a decade before me and told stories about their time in his class.
Señor was iconic for a number of reasons. To call someone “one of a kind” feels almost cliché, but truly I have never known anyone like Señor.
He wore virtually the same outfit everyday. Slacks, a button down shirt, overalls, and all-black sneakers like you see on the feet of grocery store clerks. He had poor eyesight and the thick-lensed glasses to match. He was tall, as I remember, at least six-foot. He had a borderline bushy mustache, eyes that could change quickly between expressions of compassion and cunning, and an occasional neck tic. When he smiled he often looked like he was up to something (and he usually was).
One of the best and most memorable parts of Señor’s class was our almost-daily drilling of refrans or “sayings” in Spanish. The refrans were practiced in a sort of call-and-response format, with Señor beginning the proverb and stopping so that we could finish it. The drill was often done at a fast pace, with Señor presenting overhead projector transparencies depicting the proverb and a related image on the page, and quickly sliding the sheet onto the floor or into a folder to present the next one.
My brother and I, and another friend, shared some recently as we talked about our memories from Señor’s class:
Llamar al pan pan…y al vino, vino (Tell it like it is)
No hay rosas…sin espinas (No rose without thorns)
Tal padre…tal hijo (Like father, like son)
Quien busca….halla (He who seeks finds)
Mas vale tarde…que nunca (Better late than never)
Del dicho a hecho…hay grand trecho (It’s easier said than done)
Beyond refrans, Señor often taught vocabulary with goofy puns like “Cut it out with that cuchillo (knife)!” or “Oh no! I forgot to put out the fogota (campfire)!”
Señor was a great teacher, but he was arguably better known for his friendships with students more than for his education of them. It is likely he even struggled to draw the line between where his role as a teacher ended and his role as a friend began.
More than anything in the world (other than war, which he bemoaned often as the War in Iraq raged on as I was in high school), Señor hated smoking and students smoking. At least once I heard the perhaps apocryphal story that he would offer students alcohol in exchange for their cigarettes. Definitely not legal, and unlikely to have been true, but almost believable given how much he hated students smoking.
Señor was perhaps most known for his time on the “torture bike,” as he called it, often riding 12 or more miles per day around the Northeast part of town, intentionally keeping track of students’ addresses and riding by to say, “Hello” after school or on the weekends. I’d see him often while I was outside playing basketball or doing something in the yard.
Relatedly, he had an otherworldly ability for information recall. Like many Spanish teachers, he assigned all students a Spanish name to use in class (mine was Cristóbal). When I was his student around 2006, I asked if he remembered having my cousins in class in the late 90s. When I shared their names, he remembered their Spanish names and their address. From a decade before. Having thousands of students in between.
I spent some time reading some of the notes friends and former students wrote on the obituary page for Señor, and it helped me remember just how important teachers like him are for young people, especially those who have difficult home lives.
Señor could have chosen to just show up to work everyday and be a Spanish teacher. But he didn’t. He chose to be a friend and a mentor to countless students, pouring himself out for his kids well beyond what was expected.
Sure, he wasn’t perfect—probably in plenty of ways that were never seen by his students, and certainly in some ways that were. I’m sure some of his care was maybe seen as creepy by some, especially as the cultural dynamics around teacher/student relationships began to change in his later years.
I can’t speak for everyone, to be sure. But, for me, his exceptional heart was more impactful than his effective pedagogy.
When you are young and feel invincible, it’s hard to appreciate the sacrificial love of people who know they are not.
This is the life of a teacher.
In a world that promotes self-fulfillment above self-sacrifice, we marvel at school teachers who sacrifice themselves as a means of helping others find fulfillment.
We are who we are, at least in part, because of who those people were willing to be.
What do we do? How do we carry the fire we see in the teachers who do more than teach?
We find some kind of way to spend our fragile, fleeting lives caring about kids—our own or others—who think they’re invincible and don’t know any better.
Señor posted on Facebook multiple times a day, virtually every day. He was famous for his often mundane, sometimes bizarre updates. Relatedly, I remember connecting with him on MySpace back in the day!
Señor was a noted fan of classical music and often visited the local classical music station. Just a few days before he passed, he shared that he was enjoying “Brahm’s great 4th symphony (his last) and his great Tragic Overture.” How appropriate.
It is beautiful when those who have become give their lives to help others discover who they are yet becoming.
I don’t know whether or not Señor had any sort of faith. When he found out I was attending Taylor University he advised me against being brainwashed by the Christians. But maybe, by God’s grace, he was eventually brainwashed like me. At the very least, I saw the selfless love of Christ in how he cared about a punk teenager like me.
Te amo, Señor. Que descanse en paz. Hasta luego.
