Former teacher Raymond Teller, right, during a performance of the famous illusionist duo Penn and Teller.

Many people are familiar with Raymond Teller of the popular duo of illusions, Penn and Teller. But did you know that Teller was once a teacher? Long before he became a magician, illusionist, and comedian, this oft-honored celebrity taught high school Greek and Latin at a public school in New Jersey.

Raymond Joseph Teller was born on Feb. 14, 1948, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a teenager, Teller attended Central High School. Following his graduation in 1965, he enrolled in Amherst College. He completed the requirements for his a Bachelor’s degree in the Classics in 1969.

The new graduate inaugurated his career as an educator when he accepted a position teaching Greek and Latin at Lawrence High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. He lent his talents to the classroom for six years.

Teller’s yearbook photo from his days as a Greek and Latin teacher at Lawrence High School in Lawrenceville.

As a former teacher and a performer with 40 years of stage experience, Teller has advice for professional educators. “The first job of a teacher is to make the student fall in love with the subject,” asserts Teller. “That doesn’t have to be done by waving your arms and prancing around the classroom. There’s all sorts of ways to go at it, but no matter what, you are a symbol of the subject in the students’ minds,” he continued. “As that symbol, the teacher has a duty to engage, to create romance that can transform apathy into interest, and, if a teacher does her job well, a sort of transference of enthusiasm from teacher to student takes place,” he says. “The best teachers, find a way to teach content while keeping students interested,” he concluded.

To read more about Teller’s experiences as a teacher, click on this link to The Atlantic.