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Schenectady

Classroom No. 6 at Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons High School could be mistaken for a flea market.

It's chockablock with bric-a-brac, hundreds of books, two rocking chairs, a bicycle wheel and walls plastered with portraits of the teacher's personal heroes: Robert Kennedy, John Lennon, Arthur Ashe, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Robinson, Toni Morrison, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and Miles Davis.

This comfortably cluttered warren of cultural and literary imagination, as well as life lessons, has been the home base of Paul O'Brien for more than half of his 47 years as an English teacher at the school.

He started his career as a nervous 23-year-old classroom rookie in 1967 at the former all-girls Notre Dame High School.

He closed it out this month when he retired from the merged coed Catholic high school as a wise and legendary instructor who refers to his age as "three score and 10."

The kids call him "O.B."

He is one of those transformative teachers we all hope to encounter once in a lifetime.

In a broken world, he was about healing and helping confused teenagers feel optimistic about their futures.

"He had a lot of patience and gave a lot of praise," said Karen Harp, a substitute teacher who graduated from the school in 1996. She took an English class with O'Brien and he led the students on a weeklong trip to see London's literary locales.

O'Brien poured his passion and personal history into Room 6 and gave more than 5,000 students the benefit of his life experiences intermingled with interpretations of classic texts such as "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."

He managed to craft lectures that resonated with fidgety, hormone-addled teens.

"Every object in this room tells a story, although I'd be stuck in Dante's 'Inferno' as a hoarder," he said, motioning to the dusty muddle around him. The span of his teaching career was evident in the formats of music and movies he uses in class: vinyl LPs, VHS tapes, CDs and digital computer files.

For an 8:05 a.m. class, he sometimes awakened groggy seniors by cranking up "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees.

"They danced around, did the John Travolta moves and it woke them up," he said. Once he had their attention, he slid into a lecture on Shakespeare's "Othello."

To soothe their anxieties during exams, he played classical music or Coltrane's jazz softly in the background.

He bent a rule banning food in the classroom by stocking a file cabinet with saltine crackers.

The classroom got drafty in winter, and he let students wear one of three Irish-knit cardigan sweaters he kept in Room 6.

"He's a wise mentor to all of us," said sophomore Brandon Brijlall.

"He's a unique teacher," said Darryl Scott, who just graduated. "He tells a lot of great stories, and before you realize it the 45-minute class is over." Life is not linear and neither is his teaching style. His discussions of the Greek epics — battered paperback copies of Homer are held together with layers of Scotch tape and heavily annotated with three colors of ink — are filled with asides, segues and digressions.

He is a maestro in motion, forever roaming the rows of desks. "The kids mimic me," he said. "I never realized I did it until they showed me, but I take two steps forward in an aisle, two steps back, slide over to the next aisle, and repeat."

O'Brien is a compelling storyteller with the manner of a kindly uncle: round and ruddy face, easy grin, hands in perpetual motion and a shock of silver hair. He taught three generations of students in some of the school's most popular classes: Classics of Western Literature, Pop Culture, AP English and College Writing.

"He's always been an inspiration and he put kids first," said Pat Moran, assistant principal and athletic director and a 1993 alumnus of the school who took Pop Culture with O'Brien.

"Students love him. He had more Facebook friends than the entire school for a long time," said Christine Baseel, director of advancement and a 1996 graduate who took his English class.

O'Brien talked about former students and the range of their experiences in class, from Antonio Delgado, a Rhodes Scholar who is now a successful lawyer in New York City, to Abigail Hogan, who died of a heroin overdose at 21 in 2010.

There were lessons to impart from both triumph and tragedy.

He began a deep discussion about life journeys by quoting the great Irish poet Seamus Heaney's final words to his wife before he died in 2013 at 74: Noli timere, a Latin phrase that means "Do not be afraid."

O'Brien lives in Niskayuna with his wife, Deborah Damm, an attorney, and a three-legged cat named C.T. He's been contemplating the next phase of his journey. He plans to volunteer and write a book with lessons his students taught him.

He's been bracing for the void he'll feel in the fall, the first he won't spend in a classroom for as long as he can remember.

He recalled his late mother, Anna O'Brien, whose rocking chair he brought to Room 6. She grew up on a farm in Rensselaer County with seven brothers. She was salutatorian of her senior class and her twin brother was valedictorian. The family was poor and could only afford to send one of them to higher education. Her mother decided Anna was needed on the farm, while her twin brother went to college.

"Her dream was to be a teacher," O'Brien said. "I feel like I've fulfilled my mother's dream, at least a little."