Tim Walz’s students travel to Chicago to introduce America to their teacher, coach and ally

Jacob Reitan founded the first-ever gay-straight alliance at Mankato West High School in the late 1990s. Tim Walz was the group’s faculty adviser.

When he takes the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, former students of Tim Walz and his wife Gwen Walz will be watching from inside the school.

They will also be watching from inside the United Center in Chicago, where Mankato West alumni have traveled to support their former teachers.

“The Walzes are out of central casting for good, decent people,” Reitan, who graduated in 2000, told The Independent at the DNC.

That a “football coach, a person who was well respected in the halls of West high school, would be a source of support and safety as a gay student — it meant the world to me,” said Reitan, now an attorney and LGBT+ rights activist in Minnesota.

Laura Matson, a straight ally who co-founded the school’s GSA, has known both Walzes since she was a freshman in 1998.

When parents protested a day where students recognized LGBT+ rights during a week focused on human rights, Walz and the school’s principal “were steadfast in their support of us,” she told The Independent.

“It would’ve been a lot easier to cave to that pressure,” Watson said.

They didn’t, “and as a result they created a much more considerate and thoughtful and diverse community, and enabled a lot of iother students to be honest with who they were and come out at the time,” she said.

Mankato West’s “Mr. Walz” — who taught global geography and coached football, track and basketball — also helped decorate for prom and built a set for the school’s production of The Nerd, based on a design from his student Amanda Hinkle.

Inside the United Center on Wednesday, Hinkle told The Independent that she hopes that other Americans had teachers like the Walzes, “who went the extra mile to care for others and make everyone find their community.”

“It’s surreal” to see them on the national stage, she said.

“I keep saying, ‘I can’t believe it,’ but at the same time, I can,” said Hinkle, now a theater educator in New York. “They’re the best people for the job.”

The Minnesota governor officially received the party’s nomination from Ben Ingman, one of Walz’s former students and neighbors who Walz also coached in basketball and track, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

They were joined by former Mankato West football players and their head coach, Rick Sutton.

A video introduction at the convention also featured several Mankato West alumni, including Reitan.

“I just really remember them taking me under their wing and helping me fit in, because they were from Nebraska, and my parents are from Nebraska, so I think that there was that connection — we were the new kids,” Hinkle told The Independent before traveling to Chicago for the convention.

Ida Moen Johnson, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, was taught by both Tim and Gwen Walz, who Johnson said set a “really high bar” for her students and “made it really clear that she would support all students in her class.”

“I am thrilled to have a teacher on the ticket, to have an educator who is going to be leading our country,” she told The Independent in Chicago on Wednesday.

Richelle Norton, who graduated from Mankato West in 2001 and grew up down the street from the Walzes, helped launch Mankato West Alumni for Harris-Walz to campaign for their former teacher.

“We had the Walzes before they had children of their own,” she told The Independent before heading to Chicago for the convention.

“They were really like the school mom and dad,” she said. “They were really caring teachers and powerful mentors.”

Norton had both Walzes for several classes throughout her junior year, followed by after-school ACT prep courses taught by Gwen Walz. The couple joked that a school year with them was like “homeschooling.”

Norton, who is now an art teacher in Minneapolis, said the couple challenged their students to “think beyond the corners of Mankato and see the world.”

“The world is still learning” about the Walzes, she told The Independent.

“We need to tell the stories so that the rest of the country knows how amazing they are, and they’re so hard working, and they continue to be the same people they are today as they were 25 years ago,” she said. “They have that grit, that spunk, that Midwest work ethic.”