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Why this teacher keeps one chair empty in his middle school classroom

‘We will always have room in the classroom for anyone,’ said Dan Gill, who has been an educator for 52 years

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June 20, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
Dan Gill, 75, a teacher at Glenfield Middle School in Montclair, N.J., always keeps an empty chair in his classroom. (Courtesy of Dan Gill)
6 min

All 26 chairs in Dan Gill’s middle school classroom are occupied — aside from one, which he leaves vacant.

For the past 30 years, the social studies teacher at Glenfield Middle School in Montclair, N.J., has kept an empty seat in the front corner of his classroom. It represents a childhood memory — which, Gill said, not only propelled him to become a teacher but also shaped the way he teaches.